Creating a business card using Inkscape

 

If you are in the design business, a business card is a great way to show off your level of professionalism.  No one will take you seriously if you claim to be a designer but use an inkjet printer with some business card template cutouts.  I will try to make this look as legit as possible.

This tutorial will be for a simple design that looks like it was created by a designer.  The idea for this comes from a great photoshop tutorial.

To start, we will change the document properties in Inkscape so the entire document is same size as the business card.  Standard size is 3.5" long and 2" high.  We will make it portrait.

Now for our business card we will do a background texture.  We will go for a grunge look and use a concrete texture.  Do a Google image search for "concrete texture" and hundreds of great images will come up.  The image I will be using is from imageabstraction.com

Go ahead and drop the image into Inkscape.

The image you just downloaded is going to be much bigger than the business card so we will want to shrink it down.  Also; the size is not going to be the same as what we want so what we will do is create a white rectangle the same size as the document settings and place the rectangle over the image in an area you think looks nice.

Once you have the rectangle where you want it, select both the rectangle and the image (hold shift while selecting) then click Object>Clip>Set.

Now we have the background base for our business card.

The concrete background is nice, but a bit too light.  Let's darken it a bit. Create a black rectangle the same size as the background; place in directly underneath the concrete texture, and bring the concrete texture opacity down to about 30%.

I created layers for the backgrounds, but you don't have to.

Sweet. Now we have a decent background.  That is fine how it is;  we want to keep the card simple, but we will add a design element. Staying with the idea of concrete, we will create a spray paint stencil design.

For this, think of a single word you want your card to convey. It could be your name, what you do, an emotion etc...   I have kind of been having a love affair with Inkscape recently, so I will use that for my word.

Go ahead and create a new layer.  Call it stencil text, and write your word on there somewhere.  Create a rectangle to go under your text.

You will want to select the text then apply Path>Object to Path. Once that is done you will ungroup the letters then apply Path>Difference to cut the letters out of the rectangle. (make sure you have both the letter and background selected when you do this. Unfortunately [unless someone knows a better way] you have to do this one letter at a time)
UPDATE: Thanks for the tip from ofaurax. After you have converted to path and ungrouped; simply create a union (CTRL+K) and that will allow you to cut the letters out in one step.

With that completed, go ahead and change it to white and place it creatively on the card.

Once the stencil text has been added, go ahead and lower the opacity (I did mine to 20 or 30%). I also blurred mine just slightly.

To give this more of a faded grunge look, we will freehand draw around the new stencil. Apply the filter inkblot to your new drawing (Filters>Textures>Inkblot) then change the layer mode to screen. Once that has been done, create a rectangle to clip the new object. (See pictures below)

Freehand draw the border.

Apply the Inkblot filter

Set layer mode to screen

Now clip the section.

Fun!
Now let's add a vignette.  Create a new layer; call it vignette and draw another rectangle.

Do a radial gradient for the rectangle (Press the icon to edit the objects Color, Gradient, Stroke etc. Then on the fill tab, press the radial gradient icon) and have the middle be completely transparent and the outside edges dark. Have it placed directly over everything else.

Now create a new layer and call it "Text."  Here we will add whatever works.

Add what text you would like.  Here is what I did:

Do the back and you are done!

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