Guide to Designing Your Own Business Cards

When we meet someone new, we try to create a great first impression.  Business cards often carry the liability of creating the critical first impression for a business.  It is an important communication tool that conveys the brand as well as the marketing message of a company.  While there are many companies that can design and print your business card, many small businesses do it themselves.  Designing your own business card not only saves money but also gives you an opportunity to create an identity based on your own understanding of your business. 

How to Design a Business Card

With the tools available today, it is not too difficult to design your own business card.  The following are some of the important points to keep in mind. Before getting started with designing your business card, think about the following two important things:

Who is the audience you are trying to reach?

To reach out to fresh prospects, you will need to include some information about your business in addition to your contact information.  For others who may be familiar with your business, only contact information may be sufficient.  This aspect strongly affects the design of the card; for example, in order to provide information about your business you could use a fold-over card as opposed to traditional single-sided card.

What do you want the audience to do with the card? 

This means the response you are trying to evoke.  If you want them to call, highlight your contact numbers.  If you want them to visit your website, focus on your website address.  If you want them to visit your place of business or store, emphasize your street address (which may not be necessary included in the other two cases).

Card Style

It is important to match the style of the card with the nature of your business.  For serious businesses like an educational institution, a relatively conservative style would be suitable.  Similarly, for a more casual business like a dance school, a fun and hip style would be appropriate.  There are some standard card styles which include basic, graphical or marketing focused cards.  Basic cards are straight forward, sort of minimalist cards, which are generally printed in black and white with just the necessary information.  Picture cards are used to create a colorful image of the business in the minds of the holder as well as to spin a thousand words about the business with the help of graphics.  Marketing focused cards serve multiple purposes: they provide the necessary contact information, offer information about the nature of the business and can also be used to announce special deals, promotions, etc.

Text on the Card

One of the most important aspects of a business card is the text placed on it.  Given the scarce space available, it is extremely important to choose just the right words to convey the desired information.  Some of the important elements of text that may be included are:

Name of the person

Name of the business or organization

Business address

Contact numbers

Fax number

Email addresses

URL of the business website

Job role of the card holder

Slogan of the business

Since you don’t just want them to stash the card somewhere, provide them with a reason to call by distinguishing your business from others and by using words they will remember.

Card Layout

The card layout is also an important aspect of your business card.  Its considerations include the font, colors, text that is to be emphasized, blank spaces and placement of the graphical components such as the logo. The card should be designed in an organized manner with a clear and crisp style.  The text should especially be legible and uncluttered so that it can be read easily.  Many people feel that business cards should only contain information on one side; however, this is not necessarily the case and could actually be a mistake if you could benefit from including more information using both sides of the card.

Graphics on the Card

Most people love the idea of including graphics in all of their marketing materials including business cards.  However, this decision should be made carefully based on what do you want to communicate.  The decision to use graphics depends upon the reaction you want from your audience.  If you are dealing with conservative corporate people, fancy graphics may not help much.  On the other hand, if your audience consists of hip, artistic people, tasteful graphics can take your message a long way.  A logo is one of the most important pieces of graphics on a business card.  It encapsulates the personality of a company so it should be designed carefully to depict the true nature of your business.  Among the graphics elements of a business card, color choice is also important.  One or two carefully chosen colors can give your business card a fresh and professional look.  However, bad color choices or use of multiple colors can ruin the image of the business and take the focus away from important information.

Once you have planned out the details of your card, you can use one of the several business card design softwares available in the market to design your card, or another good option is online card designing services.  Both of these options will help you design your business card without much hassle.

Printing Your Card

After all the hard work of designing your business card, last but not least is having it printed.  However, before you rush to the printer, there is one very important last step.  Proof-read the card a couple of times to make sure that there are no mistakes!  Nothing can ruin the image of your business like bad spelling or grammar mistakes on your business card. 

When choosing a printing company, consider the variety of business card finishes, papers and designs available.  The selection options include double-sided, full-bleed, full color, horizontal, vertical, fold-over, etc.  Finishing options are another important consideration, which include glossy, linen paper, mat, 80 lb. paper, 100 lb. paper, card stock, lamination, etc.

So, now you have stacks of great looking business cards sitting in front of you.  You probably want to start handing these out to everyone you can find.  But before doing that, keep the following tips from Tai Goodwin, a career and business coach, in mind:

“1. Keep your business card to yourself until someone asks for it.”
“2. Only ask for cards or contact information for people you intend to follow up with.”
“3. Make the most of your networking by regularly connecting with your contacts.”

This article was contributed by Vista Print. Vista Print specialises in pens, stickers, advertising material and cheap business cards

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