Having an amazing business card is important for the success of your business. You want to be remembered, even after you initial contact with a customer or potential business partner.  Understanding what makes great business card design is a critical part to ensuring your business card stands out.

Don’t fall prey to simple business card templates and run of the mill, boring business cards that are going to end up in the wastebasket under someone’s desk. Try these tips, instead:

1.Know Your Audience

Believe it or not, there are actually a few ways to use a business card. Maybe you want to use it as a connection point for potential employees at a job fair. Maybe you need something that’ll showcase your brand in a unique way. Whatever you want to accomplish, make sure your business card is up to the task.

You need to know whether your business cards should stand out or be strictly functional. There are some amazingly creative business cards that have stellar stand out designs however, they’re totally useless or distracting with the wrong audience. Knowing who you want to keep your business card is very important when planning your design.

2.Size Matters

When it comes to the size – and shape of your business card, doing something a little different makes you stand out. Standard business cards are fine, but they often get overlooked and lost in the shuffle. Square and circle shaped business cards, for example, stand out in all the right ways and will have people saying: “Whoa, that’s a cool business card!”

There are some industries where using a non-traditionally sized or shaped business card may do more harm than good. If you’re in a traditional business or associating with an older demographic for your customer base, you may want to consider using a traditional size and emphasizing other aspects of your business card design.

3.Touch and Texture

Use a unique texture to add visual and tactile interest to your unique business cards. If you’re in a creative or niche market, especially, things like raised letters, cutouts, plastic or wood business cards, and more can really help to put you out there as an out of the box thinker who knows that they’re doing.

4.Love Your Layout

Business cards have relatively little real estate, as their primary purpose is to be a vehicle for your information. You can still consider the space to be a blank canvas to show off your brand. Use your logo as the main (or only) bit of information on the front side, if you’re using double sided cards. Consider using diagonal lines or different text placements for ultimate effect.

Your key contact info should only take up 1 side of your business card. If you’ve got a business card design you are happy with and are looking for something useful to communicate on the back – try utilizing the blank space to communicate your company’s key value proposition or your best selling package or product. If you are going to stick with your standard business card size and texture you may as well get some more value out of it and use it for some ad design   🙂

5.Call (Email, Follow) Me

Let your clients know how they can reach you. Include a company email address – no personal accounts, please – and your phone plus extension, if applicable. Also add at least one social media account, like your Twitter handle, for people to connect with you on multiple platforms to get to know your brand a little better.

As you can see, business card design does not have to be boring! If you’re looking for even more ideas….We wrote an article on some great digital printers and each of them some tremendous options for creative business card printing (on canvas, metal, plastic…). We hope we’ve provided you with some ideas to get your creative juices flowing! If you’ve just launched a new brand or product check out our Branding Package to get all the essential company branding designed. If this article has got you all fired up and you’d like a business card re-design contact us today – we’d be happy to design your inspiration into reality!