As a graphic designer for a printing company, a lot of my work involves coming up with new and innovative business card ideas. Business cards are a fantastic marketing tool that most new businesses overlook. Over the last few years I have seen some of the most innovative and unique design ideas guaranteed to make a great impression.
Inspiration
The best way to find inspiration is to take in to account your current style of marketing materials, including your website and company logo. If your website is artistic and full of colour, you should try to illustrate this on your business card.
For the more minimalistic and simple websites, you should pay close attention to the fine design. Perhaps invest in high quality printing effects like engraving and embossing.
Remember, your business card is a mini portfolio of your work so it’s important you let your personal style shine through to impress those potential business clients. The sky is the limit when it comes to design, from colours to die cutting so you can be as creative as you like.
Information
The most common mistake made on business cards is the amount of information included. Always keep in mind the primary function of your card is for potential clients and customers to easily obtain your contact information. There is no need for you to include everything, remember less is always more!
You should use the following:
- Company name
- General details of what your company does
- Phone number
- Email
- Website URL
If you use social media to target business, always include your facebook/twitter username. Chances are customers will want to know a little more about you before contacting you, so this will give them immediate access to whom you are and who you interact with.
Innovation
Following are my favourite five examples that run the gambit from scalloped edges and elaborate die cutting, to one that is intended to be planted in the ground. Always keep in mind the message you want to portray to potential customers. Distinctive cards mean that you are about to get noticed and gain business!
One of my new clients recently inspired me to write this one. She has started up a new business and wanted an original professional logo design but didn’t want to pay the usual graphic design fees.
She chose and paid for a new and exclusive logo design at bestlookinglogos.com for $50. And then customized her own colour choices for an extra $10. Here it is:
Then she wanted some business cards designed and printed with her new logo incorporated. She was able to have the same professional designer who designed her logo, design her business cards to suit and have 1000 printed for $179 – all inclusive of new artwork. Here is what she had to say about the process and outcome..
“Thanks again for your great service, I just need to explain to my graphic designer client why I didn’t go with them for this but they certainly wouldn’t have been able to provide me with my new identity and business cards for under $250. I am sure you will hear from me again.”
And here is her business card design as it turned out:
For more information on the same service and price contact Twilight Emerald Print Design anytime.
Lisa is a graphical and pre-press designer with more than 15 years experience. She runs her own agency Twilight Emerald from Ballarat, Victoria Australia.
Traditionally the one colour business card has been the cheapest and simplest option for business card printing. These days however with such cheap prices available for cmyk full colour print it is not always the most popular option for a cheap card.
A lot of smaller offset print shops may still only have a single colour printing press though, so they would still suggest that is their cheapest option for a business card print.
In my opinion you can still get a great look with a single colour card. And as you can pick out a particular pantone ink, you can always rely on your colour printing the same with each different print run – which is not often the case with cmyk. Another advantage of spot colour printing is seen with large solid areas of colour. You will get a much cleaner and more professional finish when using a pantone or ‘spot’ colour.
If you have a logo in a particular colour and you want to reinforce you brand with a particular defining colour, you will definitely want to use a spot colour to achieve this.
In my business if I want someone to do spot colour printing, most often being one or two colour print, I use Jamek Printing
(I also designed their website). They are a small but very reliable printing business that achieve a great result, and I set up a lot of their artwork as well.
The ‘chooko’ business card as shown above is an example of a car printed single sided, single colour (pantone 485) red. This utilizes a lot of solid area so certainly best suited for a pantone spot colour.
Lisa is a graphical and pre-press designer with more than 15 years experience. She runs her own agency Twilight Emerald from Ballarat, Victoria Australia.
Certificates can often be very expensive to print if you want good quality, because each certificate has a different name and date etc. therefore you can’t save on mass quantity print runs, but there is a better alternative.
What I’ve often done for clients is set up a ‘base stock’ or ‘shell’ for their certificates, which is offset printed in spot colours or cmyk or even embossed, stamped or foiled. This can be printed in a large quantity as long as you leave out the individual details such as a person’s name and date of the certificate. Then you keep these in stock for use when you wish to overprint individual details onto this base stock.
These days just about everyone has a little black and white A4 printer at work, ideally a laser printer would be best. Then as long as your certificates are A4 size you can overprint the name and date yourself in position on the base stock, and it still looks totally professional and of great quality.
The alternative is to get each certificate printed as a whole, individually with a digital printer. The cost of this can add up to be more expensive though as a whole, if you have a large and ongoing quantity.
Lisa is a graphical and pre-press designer with more than 15 years experience. She runs her own agency Twilight Emerald from Ballarat, Victoria Australia.
