I finally realized that I needed business cards for my reporting at Medill, but I didn’t want to shell out dozens of dollars for hundreds of cards that I probably wouldn’t use. I wanted to pay a few dollars for a few dozen cards and have the option of printing more.
So, I created my own using the open-source illustration program Inkscape. My template is based on an excellent Inkscape business card tutorial. The design is meant to be printed in black and white on colored cardstock, making the text colored and the background black.
It took me a while to figure out (and obtain) the font for the Medill Logo, but according to What the Font, it’s PF Din Text Pro Thin. I converted the “Medill” text to a path in the template so you shouldn’t have to have the font in order to use the template.
If you want to get really slick, you can generate a QR code with your contact information in vCard format and print it on the back.
Download:
- SVG Medill business card template (editable in Inkscape, maybe Illustrator, uses clones to make it easy to change the design in all the cards in the 10-up layout)
- PDF Medill business card template (should be able to open this in any illustration program, but you’ll have to do more copying and pasting to edit all the cards)