Matt’s Creative Advertising Blog

How To Design A Business Card

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A business card should do something for your business…like all your marketing materials.

Here is a list of DO’s and DON’Ts that we have learned from our own business cards & designing them for clients.

DO:

Get a professionally-designed & printed card and not one from those instant machines or self-printed efforts. Your business card may not be the first impression a prospect gets of you, but it may be the one that lasts.
Include only relevant contact details on your card - the ones you want people to use to contact you. I tend to put only my email address on because I would rather people email me than call randomly for a chat & disturb me in the middle of something to ask more about my services.
Always include the address of your blog or website (or both), it is a great way of driving traffic to your site.
Include your ‘compelling offer’ or key marketing message somewhere on the card if you can.
Include a photo of yourself or something else that is a little bit noteworthy to make the prospect/contact remember you. This is especially useful if you are at a networking event where people get stacks of cards and then go through them back at the office and chuck most of them in the bin.
Ask your printer if they can seal or laminate the card so the print does not smudge (when you keep cards together in your wallet/purse and they are not sealed, they will smudge).

DO NOT:

Try to cram too much information on there and end up with a confusing mess that no-one can really read.
Use just 1 side of your card (unless you cannot afford double-sided printing), it is a total waste of space.
Use low resolution graphics which will look pixellated when they are professionally printed (your designer should advise you about this).
Use a fancy font just because it looks nice but is totally unreadable. Ideally, do not use more than 2 different font types.
Get your cards printed on some flimsy, cheap paper which creases & wrinkles whilst it is in your wallet/purse. It is worth paying the extra to get them printed on a decent weight of cardboard (at least 300gsm).
Use all the colours of the rainbow just because your printer offers a good rate for 4 colour printing.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 1:23 pm and is filed under , , Advertising, Internet Advertising, Creative Advertising, Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.