How to design a business card? Practical advice

Business cards are a kind of personality extension, but are also often used as an advertisement. People occupying a significant position should have it - first of all specialists, directors or managers. In today's article, we will show you how to design a business card. We will also suggest what a properly prepared business card must contain.

How to design a business card?

Preparing a good business card is not as easy as it may seem. This process requires a lot of work and experience, so it is worth entrusting this task to a graphic designer. Even if we have experience and manual skills, we still need to know what to pay attention to.

What should a business card contain?

Designing a business card should start with choosing the right software, it can be Photoshop, Illustrator or CorelDrow, which we will focus on today. The program is relatively inexpensive and perfectly sufficient for designing a business card. Of course, you can also use free alternatives like GIMP. The program is recommended for people who deal with graphics as a hobby or "jumpy".

The absolute minimum when it comes to the content of the business card is:

• name and surname of the owner of the business card,
• position held,
• company name,
• company logo,
• address data - are a necessary requirement if we want to invite customers to the company's headquarters,
• contact details - e-mail address, telephone number and website.

A business card worth attention

Once you know what a business card must contain, think about what it should be like. It is difficult to stand out with the data on a small cardboard, so it is important to ensure that the design attracts attention.

Each business card should also refer to the company's visual identification system. The key elements are colors and graphics, and even the font and margins. If the company has a character book - it is worth looking at it before creating the project.

• Originality

When designing a business card, the most important thing is the idea. Of course, there are characteristics that should absolutely not be changed, such as the size of the business card. However, everything else gives you plenty of opportunities to be creative. The design may, for example, refer to the industry in which we work, it may be made of unusual material, movable, transparent or extremely designer. The most important thing is originality. Let's not duplicate the business cards of the suspects in the competition.

• Clarity

Readability is the key to success. If a business card contains an excess of information, it will become crude and unpleasant to the eye. Things that are characterized by clarity are remembered much more easily.

• Attractiveness

To attract attention, a business card must simply be pretty. Its visual aspect has a huge impact on how it will be perceived by others. There are several other things that contribute to this feature, from the font to the colors to the graphics. Everything has to be coherent and presented in an interesting way.

Business card at the design stage

• Size

The first thing to figure out when starting a project is size. A business card can also have dimensions, but the standard assumption is 90x50 mm. These parameters are ideally suited to the business card holder.

• Bleeds

Another important issue is the so-called bleeds (spacing from the edge of the business card). A poorly prepared margin may cut off some key details, so it is worth taking this into account when submitting the project to the printing house.It can be assumed in advance that a 5 mm margin on each side should be enough, but many companies dealing with printing set their parameters, so you should ask about the possibly required dimensions of the bleeds.

• Contents

It should be correctly placed on the project, so that it is legible and transparent. It is important to be moderate in the message. The business card should contain the most important data, please contact us for details. The content and its arrangement must also be adapted to the graphics and logos on the business card.

• Font

The choice of the font is an equally important element of the design. First of all, because it should be consistent with the logo. A business card should also not have too large and too decorative fonts, as well as excessive colors.

• number of pages

If there is a need to add a large amount of text to the business card, it is worth considering the use of space that is on the other side. A business card is usually designed in a one-sided form, but the use of the space on the back is a very good solution for additional content, graphics, or even a map of access to the company.

• Vertical / horizontal

A less typical solution is a vertical business card, but it will be great for distinguishing. Original business cards are memorable, and additionally, they can be a great alternative for a geometric logo or marking the content.

• System

The logo should be the most important and visible element on the business card. The next one is the first name, last name and the position held. Then other contact or address details.

• Arrangement

Usually the logo is placed in the upper left corner of the card due to the habit of reading from left to right. When designing the logo itself, it is worth considering the company slogan, which can then be used and placed on the business card. Thanks to the slogan, people who take the business card immediately know what the company is doing.

• Graphics

When preparing a business card, at the design stage, special attention should be paid to the added graphics or photos. These are details that - it might seem - do not matter much, but draw attention.

• Test print

If you have a printer at home, even the simplest one, it is a good idea to print the project at your place before printing anything. The purpose of this is primarily to check the dimensions, whether all elements are properly arranged, whether the font is too small or too large. A computer monitor and paper give completely different effects, if you care about a correctly made business card, it is worth doing.

• Curves

After making any corrections, the final version of the file should be converted into curves that describe the image in accordance with its geometric characteristics. This change mainly concerns the text so that it does not undergo transformation. The printing house may not have a given font, which will then change to a standard one imposed by the system. By changing the content to curves, we will get a printout fully compliant with the design visible on the computer monitor.

• Palette of colours

Depending on the purpose of the project, we have to define which color palette we want to use. Files intended for the Internet should be in RGB, while all printouts are prepared for CMYK. The choice of the color palette in the graphics program is made either at the beginning or at the very end, just before saving and changing the file format. CMYK files sent to the printing house will not change their colors when printed. Otherwise, the colors may be distorted. The more that the computer monitor displays images in RGB mode, while the printing is performed in CMYK mode, so the appearance of the business card after printing may be completely inconsistent with what we saw on the computer monitor.

• Quality

A good business card is not only a nice business card, its quality is important. It should be printed on hard, good quality paper, minimum 300-350 g / m2.

• Format

One last thing to keep in mind before sending your file to the printer is the format change. As a rule, printing houses require the delivery of a file in PDF or TIFF format. A file prepared in this way guarantees a good printout.

When designing a business card, the most important thing is to arrange a fairly small space well, which must be graphically consistent. A business card should be simple, neat and elegant. The key is to provide the customer with the necessary information about us in a simple and quick way.