Starting a business? Rebranding? Simply wanting a fresh design with new details? But just don’t know where to start…We’ve got you!

We know it can seem daunting figuring out colour schemes, patterns, size and designs, so that’s why we’ve created a ‘top tip’ article to help you. A business card is usually the first interaction potential customers have with your brand, so you want to ensure it is a positive one! An effective business card is more than just contact details, it is a window to your company, an opportunity to show your professional look, build trust with customers and make you STAND OUT!

But how do you do this? Let us tell you below:

1. Design:

Find a design that reflects your brand’s personality. You want the first impression of your look to tell your customer all about your brand. If you create elegant celebration cakes, you may opt for clean lines in a simple and elegant design with a neutral colour palette. Whereas, if you sell fun, bold, abstract paintings, you may opt for a bold and colourful design to reflect your ethos and personality of the brand.

Tip: It may help to brainstorm first what your brand stands for and how you want to portray this to the world. Once you’ve created a design, you can ask family or friends what they think to see if that matches the personality you are aiming to achieve.

2. Font:

Selecting a font sounds easy, right? Until you start to scroll through and see how many fonts are available!

You should always follow your brand. For example, for a child party entertainer, you may choose a fun bubble font, whereas for a sophisticated hairdresser, you may choose an elegant script or curved font.

If you have a specific font that is used across your website or other marketing materials, you should bring that into your design for continuity and a more polished look.

Tip: We say to make the company name larger than a font size 12pt, and never use font sizes smaller than 8pt, as this makes it difficult to read and is therefore not easily engaging.

3. Size and shape:

There are a few options when it comes to the size and shapes of business cards. However, if someone says, ‘business card shape’ to you, what do you think of? A small sharp rectangle the size of a credit card? This is the traditional format of a business card, however, if you are wanting your brand to stand out or create something a little more eye catching, you may choose to use curved edges or a square shape.

Tip: Decide whether your brand is traditional or a strong non-conformist?

4. Organise:

You may be wondering what information really needs to be included? You need to organise your information into what you want your customers to know – this could be where to find you online, how to contact you, where you are trading from and of course, your name. You could also include social media handles if you have a strong online presence.

Remember not to over crowd the small space, but include everything you need to let your customers know how to easily contact you. Ensure the card is clearly readable but also visually appealing and not messy. You can help to keep everything uniformed by creating clean alignments. Using too many elements can make it look cluttered and distract from the important details.

Tip: For visual purposes, it’s best to start with your logo and name in a bigger size, and then move onto secondary information such as contact details and website address. You can alter how this looks by playing around with font sizes, locations on the card or adding images.

5. Logo:

Maximising your logo is highly recommended. As we mentioned earlier, a business card is the first impression to a potential customer. A strong visual logo help to create a balanced design – leading the consumer to think of your brand as professional and trust worthy. When choosing the colour palette for your backgrounds / fonts, try to incorporate your brand colours from the logo to help create a polished look.

Tip: Consider putting JUST your logo on one side of the card. This visual representation of your business, deserves a prominent space to catch the eyes of budding customers.

6. Proofread:

We cannot stress enough how important proofreading is! If we could shout it through the screen, we would… PLEASE PROOFREAD. THEN AGAIN. AND AGAIN.  You do not want to eagerly open your newly delivered box of business cards (or any marketing material for that matter) to find a typo!

Ask someone to check over your design before sending to print in case of something you have missed. You don’t want to make a spelling mistake or mistype your contact details. This can be a very frustrating, expensive mistake to make.

We hope we have given you some tips on how to design your business card effectively. However, if you feel you still need some assistance, we offer design services so we can take the stress away and design one for you – get in touch if we can help. Otherwise, good luck and have fun with designing!