Even in this supposedly “electronic” age, business cards (or visiting cards, or address cards—if you don’t want to sound too business-like) remain popular. This little piece of cardboard is a reflection of your—or your organization’s—personality, a little presentation of what you consider most important about you. So, not surprisingly, the design aspect of this small item of stationery is very important. Like in a three-line haiku, you have a very limited space to make a clear, original, and memorable statement.
For the same reasons—simplicity, limited space, and the need for the design to stand out—a business card is a perfect test project for such an essential designer’s tool as a vector editor. Inkscape’s toolset makes it a great tool for the job; its only real weakness is the relative difficulty of creating print-ready output files with device colors.
The steps of this tutorial show two quite different sample designs, but I’m not inviting you to follow them exactly (unless you just want to learn the techniques). If you plan to design a real business card, try to find and analyze a lot more examples than these two, and play with Inkscape to come up with something that combines the best features you’ve seen with something completely original. Creativity cannot be taught, but it can be inspired. My examples are both somewhat on the artsy side; perhaps what you have in mind for your own card would be more traditional—but the general approach would be the same.