John Williams of Entrepreneur Magazine offers five tips for creating a business card that makes a good first impression. He recommends using a professional designer, keeping a simple layout, sticking to the standards business card size of three and one-half inches by two inches, being selective about the information that you include on the card and keeping the back of the card blank or using it for supplemental information. Several applications are available for Mac users who choose to create their own business cards.
Create business cards using the Apple application "Pages" (see Resources). The Pages application includes 17 templates that you can customize. Additionally, you may download other templates from the iWorkCommunity website (see Resources). After you load a template, click on the placeholder text and design elements and open the “Inspector” to adjust the typeface, color and layout. Pages also allows you to drag artwork and photos from other applications to further personalize your business cards.
Use Microsoft Word for Mac to make business cards (see Resources). Word for Mac includes three basic business card templates that you can customize in the "Project Gallery." To change the graphics or color of the card, click on the “Master Pages” tab in the lower right corner and access the “Autoshape” window from the “Format” menu. Additionally, you have the option of using the “Labels” tool to create a sheet of basic text-based business cards.
Make business cards using Business Card Composer (see Resources), a shareware application for Mac. Business card composer includes 740 design templates, 100 extra fonts and a library of 24,000 images. After selecting a template in the “Assistant” window, you can import graphics like clipart, geometric shapes and your own images. You are able to adjust colors, add special effects and create gradient color fillings to make a custom business card design.
