Apple Pages is a treasure trove app for productivity that every Mac user could probably get some use out of. You can create so many types of documents on it. So, I created a personalized business card! Here is everything you need to know.

Using the Business Card Template

One of the best features of Apple Pages, besides its intuitive interface that comes with being a native Apple app, is the wide array of templates available at your disposal.

While these templates make your life easier by saving time and effort, they are also visually stunning. You have many categories to choose from, and one template you can use is the business card template, which allows you to customize your ideal business card the way you want.

To start designing your business card, open the Apple Pages and create a new document then click on “Stationery” in the template followed by “Business Cards.”

Here, you will find a few options that differ in layout, style, and alignment. Double-click on your favorite card design to start working on the preset template. You will see a document with ten generic placeholder business cards on the pages that you can make your own.

Customizing Your Business Card

To begin with, have a think about what you want your business card to look like. An ideal business card highlights your name or business name, contact information, and job title.

The business card templates on Apple Pages contain the vital information you usually find on business cards, but you can always add or remove any information you find irrelevant. Once you have your document ready to go, you can customize the placeholders.

Click on the text of any placeholder to see the text formatting options on the “Format” tab. Here, you will see more tabs—Style, Text, and Arrange—where you can make changes to:

• Text size, font, color, opacity, and spacing
• Borders and shadows
• Arrangement of various elements
• Text wrapping
• Alignment of text

You can also play around with background colors, change paragraph styles, and create bullet lists. Adding shapes like lines or icons can add details and appeal to your card. I recommend making changes to only one placeholder, since duplicating the formatting and information for the rest is an easy process.

Optimizing Your Design

Once you have made your ideal business card on one placeholder, you can duplicate the design on the other placeholders for print. Apple Pages makes this process easy with “Group” and “Lock” options, that allow easy duplication across the page.

Once your design is complete, delete all the placeholders except for the one that you just designed. Now, drag your cursor across the entire design, or click on all elements with the “Shift” key to select the complete design. Right-click your trackpad (or mouse, if you use one) and tap on “Group.”

Alternatively, after selecting the design, go to your Mac’s menu bar > Arrange > Group, or go to Format > Arrange > Group.

Now, you can copy and paste the grouped design across your page. To make things easier, Apple Pages gives you background lines and alignment lines that make the process smoother. Once you have, say, two or four cards on your document, you can save time by grouping all the cards and copying these across the page.

To ungroup the elements, select the grouped text, repeat the process of right-clicking (or going to the “Arrange” menu option), and click on “Ungroup.”

If you want to make sure your designs do not move while you are copying and pasting them, you can also lock them in place. You will find the “Lock” option on the same menus as the “Group” option.

My final business card designs were sleek and quick designs that were very easy to work with and took about 15 minutes out of my day.

Printing Out the Card

Working on your business card on Apple Pages is an all-encompassing process. The app optimizes your design to print, and the thin lines near the edges of your template’s page make for an easy guide for cutting printed pages into cards of uniform size.

First, you can change the print settings and layout of your document by clicking on the “Document” tab on the right side of your page. Here, you can choose where you want the page orientation and page size. You can also choose to include headers, footers, and margins for print, and check off facing pages.

You can also go to your Mac’s menu bar and click Pages > File > Page Setup to change page orientation, paper size, and scaling, and change the document’s formatting for a specific printer. By default, this is set for “Any Printer.”

When your document settings look good, go to File > Print. Here, you can finalize your document settings and set the page setup as the default. You can also add borders and choose to keep “Print Page Backgrounds” (which I recommend, since cutting and shaping your printed cards will be an easier task).

Select your printer, and click “Print” to get your personalized business cards.

How Does Pages Compare?

Some of Apple Pages’ templates are far superior to the templates offered by its word processor counterparts, like Google Docs and Microsoft Word.

Google Docs does not offer any business card templates, which is a shame given that its library of templates offers a few good options for business-centered documents. To create a business card on Google Docs, you would have to download or copy templates from third-party websites or create them from scratch, which is a hassle.

While Microsoft Word has a few visually appealing business card templates to work with, the major problem you will face when designing is that it is very difficult to move things around. You are stuck with the template as it is, with the option to change the text and its formatting.

On the other hand, you can change basically everything you want on a business card template on Apple Pages. Smoothly moving elements around is easier.

I find that, as a Mac user, creating a business card on Apple Pages is a far easier process compared to its other counterparts, and it’s a good reason to give Apple’s word processor another shot. If you are looking for something more design-focused and advanced, then templates on apps like Canva would be ideal.