Moon Bat Media

Your Business Card Design is vital to your business. When you hand this to a potential customer, it can make or break what happens next. How will they remember you in six or eight months when they look at that card again? A good investment for your business is this card, as it represents you. Take the time with a designer to make this card show all you can be to a customer, a card that will be remembered for its style.

There is very little space available on a card so every item placed on the card must be essential to what you are trying to convey to a potential customer. If your name or the company name is the element that is critical to point out to the customer that surround it with white space. White space will cause the eye to be drawn to it.

Graphics should only be used if it helps identify who you are and what you do, not just to fill up space. White space would do more for you than a graphic that was not specific to what you are promoting. A logo would be important in this case, or possibly a photo of you if that is what you are promoting. In using color on the type, less is considered more. Too much variety in colors of type could make the card look confusing. The colors of the background and the type should have a good contrast for easy readability.

Your fourth grade teacher would have nightmares over the lack of good grammar used when typesetting. The rules just do not apply. You are splashing a white space with bits of information and bullets are pleasing to the eye whereas commas drag down a design. Use only one or two fonts and change up the style with bold, stretching or italics. When you are done typesetting it watch out for typos. How does it look? Does your eye make the trip from the most important element to the second and third? Or is there any focus? If your important element does not stand out then add white space and tighten up the other copy. You might also use bold type.

The one thing you do not want to do is ‘shotgun’ the design. That is a typesetting term that means everything is equally spaced between each line and nothing is standing out. Whether it is right justified or centered is not the issue. If nothing stands out why would your potential customer call you? You want the main item to be what catches the eye first. Then you should have a second and possibly a third item that is important. You use font, size and possibly color to make that happen.

You will need to decide how much information you want to place on the card to determine which style card to get. There are two sided printed cards, folded cards and the standard one side print cards. Basic information such as company name, your name, with numbers, address and fax number if you are offline, or web site, and email if online. Or if you are both then you will need all that information. The folded cards and the two sided print cards give you the opportunity to say more to your potential customers as there is more space to use for graphics, spacing and listing information on.

When you have the design you are happy with, hold it at arms length and see where it makes your eye travel. Is the most important element that you want to convey the first thing you see? Then what is the second element that catches your eye? And what is the third? That is what your customer will see. So make sure when you are done that the elements of importance are what catch the eye. A good designer can also help you with these elements of design. Then you will put your best foot forward when you hand out the cards to your potential customers.

Steven Snell is a web designer and blogger from Pennsylvania. His site includes some examples of amazing business card design for your inspiration. Don’t miss the collections of unique business cards and professional business card design.