Top 10 Tips for Business Card Design

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The use of paper has decreased many folds in modern offices. Everyone prefers to have information transmitted digitally, and all the essential contact details are also available online. It’s more critical in today’s day and age to have an updated LinkedIn page with your details than it is to have proper business cards and printed material.

However, we can’t deny the importance of networking personally, even in today’s digital age. You can meet a potential client anywhere. It’s thus essential that you have business cards to exchange details quickly and efficiently. It’s often too cumbersome for people to take out their phones and take your number, especially if they’re in an environment that isn’t necessarily made for networking. Business cards provide a non-imposing method for relaying information about your business that a client can look at later.

To do so, the design of business cards needs to be proper and minimal. You’re conveying all the essential details regarding your business on a small business card. Therefore, you should design it in a way that summarizes your personality. There are so many ways you can go wrong with business cards. Here are some business card design tips.

Table of Contents

1. Follow Basic Design Principles

Since a business card is printed material, there are some basic principles you should ensure you’re following. You should ensure the words are at least 5mm away from all edges. When designing on the computer, work on 300 dpi. You should have a minimum size of words so that the card is legible.

Many designers also find it better to follow the grid theory to correct their alignment and hierarchy.

2. Learn to be Creative

Many designers let the small size of a business card stop them from being creative regarding it. The most crucial aspect to consider is what information needs to be written on those cards. It would be best if you had your name, phone, your business’s address, and sometimes even your social media handles. As long as these details are on the card, you can present them as creatively as you want.

3. Find a Template That Reflects Your Brand’s Personality

If you don’t want to design your business cards from scratch, that’s okay too. There are many templates available online for you to choose from. It would be best if you were very thorough when doing so. Make sure you pick something that seems to merge with what you’re selling. Having a floral template for car repairs wouldn’t make sense now, would it? Don’t lose the plot when you’re picking a template.

4. Be Aware of Common Mistakes

There are mistakes that people make all the time when they’re designing printing material. Enlist the help of someone who knows what these common mistakes are and try your best to avoid them. The most common mistake is not providing a bleed as specified by your printer. We also recommend that you don’t have any simple border around the card. Our advice is because such a border will show up any errors in the cutting of your cards.

5. Pick Your Size, Shape, and Typeface.

The size, shape, and orientation of your business cards relate to how much information you’ll be able to put on them. Most business cards are rectangular because they’re roughly the size of credit cards and can fit in people’s wallets. However, if you want to stand out, you can pick a different shape.

Additionally, if you have a font that you use on your brand’s website, you may create some symmetry by bringing this font into your business cards.

6. Apply Special Finishes

Using special finishes like foil blocking, spot-UV, or even metallic inks can make your card stand out immensely compared to other cards. It makes your cards more visually impressive and thus makes them more memorable too. These may cost you a little more as you may have to get an external printing service.

7. Make the Most of Your Card

Don’t just settle on using one side to relay information. Make sure you’re using all the real estate on your card. Your card should be working very hard for you, which means that you should put information on it in a way that will create a sales pitch for you. If you have a jewelry business, you can go as far as using it as a tag on your jewelry or clothes or packaging.

8. Use Different Materials

Most people use card stock for their business cards, and that’s fine. However, if you want to go the extra mile, you can also have business cards printed on transparent plastic, wood, or even slate. However, you want to ensure that this is in line with your business. Otherwise, it will become a gimmick, and your customers will likely catch on.

9. Make it Environmentally Friendly

Most people use business cards until they’ve saved the contact details from them on their phones. Then the card is rendered useless. There’s already so much trash on the planet, and you should use your cards to counter that. Consider printing your cards on seed paper so that once your customers are done with it, they can plant a tree. This attempt to make a more sustainable product will not be taken lightly by the customers.

10. Double Check Your Design

There’s nothing worse than printing all your cards only to see that you got some vital information wrong. You could have also accidentally misspelled something straightforward that may irk the customer a bit. So before you send your cards off to printing, you should ensure that you’ve double-checked all the essentials not to waste time, money, ink, or paper.

Final Thoughts

Business cards design may not seem like a significant factor for the success of businesses today. But careful consideration in such a small aspect speaks volumes about how you treat your business. It’s likely to make customers call you if you put thought and effort into the design of your business cards. Thus, we hope that some of our business card design tips helped you gain more perspective regarding the process and its results.