Design Process - How I design a business card #1

A business card is an important piece of marketing material for your business, it gives the client your business name, contact details and an idea of what your business is about. The most common mistake that I see with a business card is that people try to put too much information into a very small area and the card end ups looking to cluttered. If you want to place a lot of information onto your business card my advice would be to opt for a small flyer that will give you enough space to add in your information (that will be coming in another blog post).

Remember a standard business card is 85mm x 55mm (8.5cm x 5.5cm) so there isn't really a lot of room to play around with.

Ok so with that out of the way where do you begin with designing a business card? Firstly I collect all the information that is relevant for the business card (and discuss the design), this will include:

• business name
• logo
• phone number
• email address
• website
• address of premises
• social media links

Once I have all that information collected I start of by planning how to layout all that information onto the card along with any vector images / pictures. 

I always make sure to put together a number of designs together (anywhere from 2 - 6) for the client to have a look at and for them to chose design they feel is best for them. Often the client will chose different elements from a couple of designs that they want put together.

You want the front of the card to stand out and grab the attention of the viewer for them to want to pick it up. On the front I usually place the logo, business name and if required an image that is associated to that business, i.e if it's a restaurant there may be an image of one of the dishes on the front.

Below are some of the initial concepts that I put together for my identity project in my final year of university.

On the back of the card is where I place all the contact details for your business, (Tip: make sure everything is correct and up to date, theres nothing worse that realising that some of the details you provided are wrong or are no longer in use). I try to keep the text on the back to a minimum so that it doesn't become too over crowded with information that may end up confusing the viewer. 

The ideal size for the text on a business card is usually between 6 and 10pt. You want to refrain from having the text too small so that it's unreadable and you don't want it too big that it fills the whole space. This will limit the area around it to add in any logos / small graphics that you may require and it could end up looking out of proportion to the design. (unless of course that what you are going for).

The revision stage can vary, some clients may chose one design and will be happy to have that printed while some clients will want certain things tweaked or changed before settling on the final design.

Below was the final design that I chose to use for the project.

Once the client has decided on the design they would like it's then time to set the final design up ready to print. I will cover this in another blog post.

*just to note that this is the process that I use to design a business card and in no way I'm I saying that this is the only way to do it, other designers may use a different process. the images in this blog post are showing a selection of work from a university project.