Business cards are one of the most effective ways to promote your brand and connect with potential clients. But creating a professional and eye-catching business card can be challenging and time-consuming. That’s why you need a a tool that can help you design your business card in minutes, like Canva.
In this article, you will learn how to use Canva Pro’s features to create a business card that stands out from the crowd. You will discover how to use magic design, templates, and filters to customize your business card according to your preferences and needs.
In addition to using Ai to create our template, we will also learn how to edit your business card in Canva, so you can make changes anytime needed. By the end of this article, you can create your business card with Canva and impress your clients with your professionalism and creativity.
The Main Steps To Creating Your Business Card In Canva
As an overview for creating your business card, follow the steps below to create your business card in Canva.
- Sign Up Or Log in To Canva
- Go To The Side Panel And Select All Templates
- Click The Try Magic Design Button
- Select Insert Media And Select An Image Your Want To Use For Your Card
- Use Categories To Narrow Your Template Selection
- Use Filters To Customize The Templates Further
- Select And Customize Your Chosen Template
- Edit Your Template Using The Canvas
- Download Your Business Card
If you follow these steps, you will be able to produce a business card that is unique to your brand using your own custom image or logo, and with the help of artificial intelligence to select the best template.
What Is Canva Pro, And Why Do You Need It?
Canva is an online design software that allows you to create almost anything that you need to run your business from a creative standpoint.
Not only can it be used to generate unique business cards for your enterprise, but it can also create other formats ranging from greetings cards to Instagram posts, to even Facebook advertising and company logos.
80% of all the features and templates in Canva are available for free. All you need to do is sign up for a free account with your email, and you are good to go.
However, the very best tools in Canva, as well as a more expansive library of elements and templates require access to the paid version of the Canva platform, known as Canva Pro
Why Would I Need Canva Pro
Canva Pro is a premium subscription service that gives you access to all the features and resources of Canva, the world’s leading online design platform.
With Canva Pro, you can create professional and personalized business cards in minutes without any design skills or software.
It should be noted that you can absolutely create a business card from scratch using the free tools accessible in Canva, so if you are not planning to use the tool regularly then you probably wont need a subscription to Canva Pro.
We have a subscription ourselves, because we use the platform almost daily and love the ai tools that come with the Pro subscription, as well as the expanded library of assets.
You can also use Canva Pro to design logos, flyers, posters, presentations, social media posts, and more. Canva Pro offers you many advantages over other design tools, such as unlimited storage, advanced editing tools, team collaboration, brand kits, and millions of premium images and fonts.
Here are some examples of successful business cards created with Canva Pro.
Creating A Business Card From Scratch (The Manual Way)
If you only have a free version of the Canva platform, or you want to be able to design your business card from scratch using no templates or any artificial intelligence, we have got you covered.
As we mentioned, it is entirely possible to create your business card without a pro subscription, we just don’t have as many resources to do so.
To create your business card from scratch, first log in to your account on canvas, whether it be a free or paid account. Then on the homepage of Canva, selects the Create My Design button. It should appear purple in the top corner.
This will open up a small pop-up menu that will allow you to choose the appropriate template for your design. This template means typically determining the size of the canvas you will be working with.
Now this is not the same as using ai to create the template for the design, we are only defining the dimensions here. We could use numerical values at the bottom of the window, but a better way is to use the text box at the top.
Type in business in the text box and the templates available will be limited to business cards. There are still a few to choose from here, but the most popular will be the landscape options, both rounded and regular.
For our example, we will select the Business Card Landscape option and left click, which will open up the Canvas page in a new window.
Using this canvas we can create our business card from scratch. Now any business card will require three items, and rarely will it need more or less than three. These three items are:
- Company Logo/Name
- Your Name
- Your Contact Details
That’s all a business card really easy, and often simple is best when it comes to business cards. With our example, we want to create a graphic to act as our logo. If you already have a logo for your business, then you can go to the side panel and select Upload.
From here, you can select the upload button and import your company logo from your desktop or device that you are using.
There may also be a logo section depending on when you are using Canva, but note that this section will eventually be moved to the Brand Hub, which is great if you plan to use Canva consistently for your projects and business.
As a personal touch, I like to use dark backgrounds for my business cards and light elements like text, as a white background is a bit boring, in my opinion.
In Canva, the background is its own element, so you can select it and then go to the header bar above where you should see in icon for color. Up the menu from here to access a range of colors for your background.
You can create a placeholder if you don’t have a logo yet. Go to the elements tab and then type in what graphic you want to add to the text prompt. Since we are in the education business, let’s go with books.
Then we select the graphic we want to use, which appears on our canvas as a unique element. We can then resize and reposition the element on the Canvas.
Then we need to add the appropriate text to our canvas, which can be done by selecting the text tab in the side panel.
We can add in regular text or use different headings, and we can even choose from different text styles, although this is not recommended for a simple business card.
Pro tip: The largest font on a business card is normally always your name, as it needs to stand out from everything else. The exception may be the company’s name if it is part of the logo.
We will use heading 1 for our example and use that for our name. The default font is not great, so we will change it from the header bar to something more elegant.
Even if you choose a handwritten style, it is still important to ensure that the writing is legible to the reader.
Then we will use smaller headings for additional text, including Job Title, Email, Phone Number, And website.
For contact details, you should use a clear font, even if it differs from the font used for your name.
Below is the result of our business card from scratch after just five minutes of work.
There is a lot that we could improve here, but thanks to Canva, we have something that we can use after only five minutes of editing. If we want to create more professional-looking designs though we could use Canvas Magic Design features for even better-looking business cards, and without even spending that much more time creating them.
How To Choose A Template for Your Business Card?
One of the best features of Canva Pro is the huge library of templates that you can use as a starting point for your business card design.
You can browse and filter the templates by category, industry, style, color, and size. You can also search for keywords or themes that match your brand identity and vision.
Once you find a template you like, click on it to open it in the editor. There, you can customize the template with your images, colors, fonts, and logo.
The first step is to go to the canvas home page. From here go to the side panel and select All templates. This will open up the template section of Canva, where you can choose from literally thousands of templates for your potential designs.
At the top of this page, there will be three buttons. The first would allow us to adjust filters for our designs based on style, theme, and color. The second option allows us to define the category. This will be an important one because it will allow us to isolate templates based on a specific use case, like a business card.
The third option is a button that allows us to try magic design. If we left-click on this button, it takes us to a very similar page, but we get a new Insert Media button on this page which will allow us to use artificial intelligence to create a template using our own uploaded images.
Let’s use this workflow to create a new business card. We will start by selecting the category option, which will open up a menu. From this menu, open up Marketing, and then the second option here should be for business cards. Left click, and it will reduce the total number of templates available to business cards exclusively.
We can now select from a series of templates for our business cards. The best thing about these templates is that they will be front and back designed. Something easy to forget if you are creating a business card from scratch is to design the back of the card as well as the front.
At the time of writing, this gives us over 16,000 templates, which is a bit much, so maybe we want to further specialize our business card to match eh certain style or look we can do this by applying filters.
If we select the All Filters button positioned above the templates, we can open up a side panel where we can choose various aspects of our business cards’ look. These aspects are divided up into the following.
- Style
- Theme
- Format
- Features
- Grade
- Subject
- Topic
- Color
Within each of these, we can select different traits that we want our what business card to possess. Perhaps the most important one is going to be the format. This will determine whether or not our business card is portrait or landscape, or if it has sharp corners or rounded corners. We like landscape designs for our business card, so we’re just going to choose landscape.
We’re going to change the style as well. If we look towards the bottom of the style section, we can click on the few more buttons to show us all the styles available for this specific aspect of our card. From this list, I’m going to select Modern.
Looking next to each option, you’ll see a number in parentheses. This indicates the number of templates that will be generated by Canva as a result of all of the filters you have assigned. So the more filters we assign from different aspects, the lower the number of templates that will be generated.
Note that if he were to take on multiple boxes from the same section, such as the styles, then you would generate templates that would fall into any of those styles, which would, in turn, increase the number of templates developed.
Ideally, we want to try and get between 10 to 200 templates based on our specifications. Not too few, but not too many so that we know that the options are higher quality.
The last box I will tick for my example will come under the topic section, where I will take the box for Graphic Design. Then when I’m ready, I will click the apply button, and it will create a series of templates based on my filters.
If you see the crown symbol in the button right corner of a template image, it means that template is only accessible for those with a canvas pro subscription. If you have your own logo or image that you want to use, however, then Canva can generate templates based on that instead.
Once you start defining your categories and filters, the Magic design AI tool would no longer be visible on the page. So to bring it back into view, just select all templates from the side menu again. Next, select the button labeled Try Magic Design.
The page reloads and then you have an additional option that will allow you to insert new media. Left Click to open up this option and you’ll be able to upload an image or logo to use as the base of your templates. Alternatively, you can select from previously uploaded images as well.
We have a custom logo that we recently created in Canva ourselves, so we’re going to be using that one for example.
Unfortunately, at the time of writing this does not produce many templates, if any at all, but it is a tool that is still in beta and as it continues to improve, come back and check to see if uploading your specific images can generate better templates. For now, though, you may want to choose the traditional method of just selecting a category and filter for your business card.
When you do select the filter another window will pop up and she will be able to click on the button labeled Customise my Design. This will take the template into a new window and position it on your canvas You can then edit the business card and its elements using that template following similar steps to before, but now you have something to work off of.
Adding Your Contact Details and Other Information
The next step in creating your business card is to edit the text fields on your template. Double-click any text field to change the content, font, size, color, alignment, and spacing. You can also add or delete text fields as needed.
When editing the text fields, remember what information you want to include and exclude on your card.
The essential information for a business card is your name, title or position, company name or logo, phone number, email address, and website or social media links. You can also add other information that is relevant or unique to your brand or industry.
Once we have finished with our editing we end up with the following result based on our selected template.
How to Print and Share Your Business Cards
Once you are happy with your business card design, you can download it in different formats and sizes. You can choose from PDF (for print), JPG (for web), PNG (for transparent background), or MP4 (for animated cards).
You can also adjust the dimensions and resolution of your card according to your preferences or printing requirements.
After downloading your card design, you have several options on how to print or share it. You can print it professionally using Canva Print service or at home using your own printer.
If you want to keep it digital, you can also share it online via email, social media platforms (such as Facebook or LinkedIn), or websites (such as Behance or Dribbble).
If you decide to use the Canva print service, then there should be a button labeled Print Business Cards next to the share button in the top corner.
Warning: this button is only visible when using specific templates, like the Business Card Landscape. It will not show up for other templates, and some business card templates, like business card square, will not have this option.
When you select this option, an additional panel appears on the page where you can define the key characteristics of your business card.
Example images of your business can in use will be generated, giving you an impression as to how to card is going to look. This is useful because it highlights something important, cards have two sides.
Because our focus was only on the front of the card, the back can appear white and bland if not using a template. Below the canvas, you can add a second page to work with, so spend some time on that.
It’s not as important as the front. So all you need to do is match the background color and maybe add the company name or slogan to the back.
When we return to the settings, we have two-page options, the front and back of the card. The front will already be connected to the original design, which is page 1. The back needs to be connected to page 2, which is as simple as a click and select.
Next, you can choose between two qualities of paper, either standard or premium. There is minimal end cost between the two, so we recommend always going with the premium option.
After that, we have the paper finish, where we can choose between a matte, glossy, or uncoated finish.
Regarding cost, Matte is the cheapest, with glossy second and uncoated the most expensive. In our opinion, and we have tried them all, both the Matte and Uncoated options were great, while we did not prefer the glossy finish as much.
Finally, you can determine how many cards you want to order, starting at 50. Of course, the more you order, the more expensive it will be, but the cost per card will decrease.
All of these options will influence the final cost of the transaction, but ultimately you should choose the settings that you want. When ready, click the continue button and make your purchase.
If you want to take your own homemade business to the next level, or if you want to upgrade your enterprise’s image, then a professional business card can help you generate a more professional image.
It can also help to ensure that you and your business are taken more seriously in your chosen industry, which can lead to increased opportunities.
By using Canva Pro for creating business cards, you can save time and money while showcasing your brand identity and professionalism.
If you are ready to start designing your own business card today, sign up for Canva Pro or log in to your account now.