Business Card Design and Printing

How Important is a Business Card?

In today’s world of business it hard to gauge how important a printed business card is to you. I mean people can email you, phone you or visit your site to get in touch with you. So why all the fuss and expense around getting a personal business card printed? My take is business cards are always going to be a requirement. Like any product, they must move with the times. The personalized business card has advanced over decades with new products such as CD business cards, short run full color business cards plus many other options.

Your Business Card- Portable, Transportable …Your Partner

Think about where we are in time. Many corporations have lightened up on dress code. Having a real meeting (in the flesh) is a rare privilege with a prospect. But let’s look at simplicity and ask three questions, what, where and when? The answer is your business card. It can go anywhere with you, anytime and can be applied to almost any situation where contact info is required. In a matter of seconds you can casually reach into your pocket and pull out a trusty business card to hand to the person you are talking with. Many folks spend a ton of time making the perfect business card because they know what I am saying!

Get the Right Prep for your Business Card

Now for those of you that also understand the power of your own personalized business card I want to caution you on a few of the mistakes I see commonly made in the design and printing of business card today. You see, making a business card can be compared to getting your car old car painted. The similarity is “in the prep” as they say in the body shops. You can have the best painter if your car’s preparation was not done properly then you end up with fish-eyes (Specks in the finish) or orange peel finish (Course looking paint). When you set out to create your own business card, the printing can only be as good as the design. If the design is not professional then the finest printing equipment in the world is not going to help you.

Gain Knowledge by Making Mistakes

On planet earth we all make mistakes. Mistakes provide the highest level of learning, they are opportunities to improve. Here are a few of the common mistakes I see in the full service production of business cards;

• Do not make the font size so small that you cannot read the text. Assuming that you do want to take full advantage of the real-estate offered on a business card then make sure it’s not over-populated with so much text that it can’t be read. Save that for your marketing material.
• Do not choose colors that are blah or just a plain eyesore. Play with color schemes, learn what colors mean to the human eye
• I was given a card yesterday by a door-to-door- water filter salesman that he had printed on his inkjet printer. When he handed it to me the image was unreadable from the moisture of his last demo. For the $49 it costs to getting professional business cards ones it’s a no brainer.
• I think that image is everything!! You are judged somewhat by your appearance, demeanor and matching business. It is part of you and is not an item to cheap out on. If it looks like junk them it must be symbolic of you!
• Spend a little extra on a custom logo. It is an item that you can reuse over and over not to mention a magical way to build brand awareness.
• Do make me read!! Develop a catchy phrase or slogan that encompasses what you do and what you are about. Print that line in a bold typeface so it smacks me in the face at a glance. There’s nothing worst then sorting through my business card organized wondering what half of them do.
• Have you ever heard the term “card bombing” ? There is a time and place to network with others and hand out business cards but I have seen many eager business people handing out dozens of cards at social functions, church and family outings and find it irritating.
• Develop a nice, easy going, well balanced graphic layout that is aesthetically pleasing.
• Once you are satisfied with the appearance of your business card think about matching stationery, company marketing, etc. If you made your business card as we suggested then the design and logo can be easily adapted to letterheads and envelopes.
• Proof read your business card intensly. When you have proofed it hand it to someone else. It never hurts to have more that 1 set of eyes proofing the same project. Remember, there’s always time to do it again!
• Don’t run out! Once you establish the fact that these puppies are actually your partner in crime to compliment your business. To help prevent this we put one of these cards near the end of your order as a reminder to order in advance. Although we do offer 5-7 day shipping!

Related Links: Template Design Tutorial I The Colors Voilet, Black and Turquoise I Vintage Car Flash Card Tutorial I Corel Draw, Adobe Photo Shop, Quark Xpress, Illustrator I RGB toCMYK (Flash)

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