When it comes to making business cards there are roughly two main options available; have them professionally printed or print them yourself. The first option involves using a printing service, such as Staples, FedEx Office, Vistaprint, or a local company. These services will offer you some template business cards, or options to customize your own. The price usually reflects the number of cards, the quality of the paper, and the design options selected.
If instead you choose to print them yourself, one way you might do that is through Microsoft Publisher. First, you’ll need to buy some business card paper; it’s usually thicker and perforated so the cards don’t need to be cut out. Generally, 10 fit on one page.
1: Once you’ve opened Publisher, the first thing you’ll see is the New Publication screen, shown below:
2: Click Business Cards under the heading Most Popular and you’ll see a large list of templates:
At the bottom of this list, you can also choose blank cards of specific sizes and cards made to match specific paper manufacturers:
3: Once you’ve chosen a template or blank card, double click on it. You’ll be taken to the main design screen. Below, I’ve chosen the template “Bounce”:
4: The information in the template is only there to show you how the finished product might look. You can replace it the same way you would in a normal document, by clicking inside the text and then using Backspace or Delete:
A:
B:
C:
5: Unlike in Microsoft Word, the text you see in Publisher is generally contained within text boxes, as you can see in the above example. By holding down the left mouse button over different parts of the text box itself, you can make various layout changes, like resizing:
A:
B:
6: Or rotating:
A:
B:
C:
7: In fact, all the different elements on the card have their own boxes or boundaries, and they can all be repositioned as you see fit:
Original:
Revised:
8: If the design elements that come with the template aren’t enough, or if you’ve started with blank cards, then you can add and modify new elements from the Toolbars:
9: For example, if you select Draw Text Box from the Insert toolbar, you can add another text box to your card:
10: If you don’t want your business cards to be blank on the back, check again under the Insert toolbar. If you click the option Page, you can add a new blank or duplicate page like so:
On this new page, you will design the back of your business card. Choose duplicate if the back will be similar to the front; otherwise, choose blank.
11: Another thing you might want to add to your card is a watermark. It’s important to design the watermark before the rest of the card, as some designs won’t cooperate with it. So, for this portion, we will be starting from the very beginning, with blank cards:
12: Publisher doesn’t have a built in watermark feature (MS Word does), but you can accomplish the same thing using the Master Page option, under the View toolbar. Simply click Master Page, and you’ll see a screen like this:
Master Pages allow you to design some elements for your publication that can be used on multiple pages. Importantly for this project, the designs on a Master Page will underlie the designs on the business cards themselves. However, there are some elements that Master Page designs will not show through.
12: To begin, let’s just insert a text box into our Master Page A:
13: Next, go to the Home toolbar. Change the font to something very light, and choose either the Emboss or Engrave font effect. Then, go ahead and add some text:
14: You might even want to offset the watermark, as is occasionally done. You can do that by rotating the text box, as follows:
A:
B:
C:
15: Now, go back to the Master Page toolbar. At the top, select Apply To, and click Apply to All Pages. Then click Close Master Page. This should bring you back to your original blank publication, with the addition of the design on the Master Page. You should end up with a screen like this:
16: It may look almost the same as before, but notice that the little card on the side now says “1” instead of “A”. If you check, you’ll also notice that you can no longer select the text you see. It has become part of the background; a watermark. As you design your card on top of this background, you’ll notice that it shows through some elements, but not others:
A:
B:
C:
17: You can decide whether to have a watermark only on one side, or even a different watermark on each. This is done through the Master Page view. While looking at Master Page A and clicking Apply To, you have the option of applying the design to all pages, or to specific pages. To have a different watermark for each, click Add Master Page. Put your second design on this Master Page B, and apply it to the appropriate side:
As you can see here, we’ve simply tilted the previous watermark in the opposite direction. Since the two sides of the business card are front and back to each other, doing this will actually make the two watermarks aligned.
18: Finally, let’s move on to printing your business cards. Click File in the top left area. Then, click Print:
What you see here are the print settings, and a print preview. The template/blank business cards you initially chose will determine the size and layout of the cards seen here. It’s important to make sure the business card stock paper you’ve purchased is the size and layout that Publisher is expecting. Otherwise, it will print them misaligned.
19: If you have a printer than can print double-sided, you can simply select that option like so:
Make sure to choose long edge rather than short edge, or the back sides will be upside down.
20: If you don’t have such a printer, simply print page 1, put it back in the printer on the reverse side, and then print page 2.
Publishing your own business cards can, of course, be much more in depth than this. One might even choose another program, like Photoshop. Nevertheless, the steps detailed above should be a reasonably easy and inexpensive method. Enjoy your new business cards!
Chester County Library 
September 11, 2015 at 10:21 am
really you share very informative information thanks for sharing this