Customized business cards are a great way to stand out from the crowd, or in this case, the stack. Customized business cards will look different from everyone else’s. Custom business cards are a necessity if you’re a creative professional, whether you’re a web designer, photographer or caterer. Unfortunately, it is easy to make mistakes when you’re focused on the creative aspects. Let’s learn how to get your unusual business card right.
Remember the Reader’s Point of View
Before you turn your business card into a literal collage, remember the reader’s point of view. Where do they expect to see your business’ contact information? And while you want to express your creativity, don’t forget critical information like your name and job title.
More importantly, is the text easily read? Ensure that the text is large enough to be legible by someone without reading glasses. And don’t let fancy graphics or background colors get in the way of readability.
Choose Quality over Quantity
The business card cannot be too “busy”. Don’t load up the card with so many images that it is a strain just to look all of them. You’d do better to have just one or two images at most on the business card in addition to your logo. Leave off your headshot unless you’re working in a customer facing business where recognizing your face is essential to getting business. Classic examples include real estate and modeling.
Another variation of this advice is with regard to the information you put on the business card. Give them one or at most two phone numbers to call. Provide an overview of the services or products you provide, not a long bulleted list. This means describing yourself as a landscaping company instead of listing ten different tasks your team will do. At most, give three or four short phrases that summarize what you do. For example, you might say that you are a lawn and pool care company or offer landscaping and winter decorating services. Yet you’ll do better by having different business cards for each line of seasonal work. Then you can have different, related graphics for each service you provide.
Include your website on the business card, but only list social media profiles if it is directly relevant to your business. Web designers, social media marketers and IT professionals are among the few who benefit from listing a LinkedIn or other professional social media profile in addition to a website.
Be Kind to Your Printer
Use commonly available fonts. This eliminates the need to provide font files to the printer, and it removes the risk that your font is translated into gibberish or an undesirable font on its way to the printer.
Choose colors in CMYK instead of choosing an RGB color palette and hoping the printer creates the right shade of purple for your logo. Better yet, choose a limited range of colors and put plenty of space between images and graphics. You can also minimize the odds of problems by leaving a white border around the edge of the business card.
Choose images that are high-resolution, and make them large enough on the business card that they’ll come out as beautifully detailed as you intended. Then you won’t blame the printer because the image is grainy or too small to be recognized.