Business Card Design

I decided for my business card, I wanted to create something that would portray what I do much like the ones in my research (https://akbrodie.wordpress.com/2014/12/21/business-card-research/). I decided to create a laptop which had google’s search engine open looking for a local web designer. First I went about designing the laptop complete with keyboard and touchpad, next I added my logo on the front upside down like on the macbook range so that it can be seen the right way up from people looking at it. Something worth noting here is that created the word “Found” using the same typeface and colours as google to give it that recognisable feel, but avoided advertising them on my business card. You can see this mockup here;

After printing this version out I decided to turn the logo the right way up because the business card is all about the user experience. I also removed the details from the back of the card to ensure a clean look which is more appropriate for the ‘luxury’ styled branding I wanted to achieve. I also used google search to directly impact the design stage and here how I have used the same colour and style on my card;

– I must note here the reason for the circle shape ate the bottom is a line for me to cut out when it is printed so that you can lift the screen up. If you look carefully, I have also tried to avoid putting across the idea that there are other competitors, so underneath me at the top there are a few other ‘designers’ which are completely made up with names and descriptions that make them sound really bad. I have also faded them out the lower down you go so that the main impact was my details. The only way this card looks different to the real thing is the fact that it has an arrow and my telephone number to the side.

Below you Can see the different versions I printed out with the first on the left, you can see both outside and inside, the physical changes I made to the design.

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Business Card Research

To create a strong, professional brand, I will need to apply the same visual identity to all of the products that I produce. Materials used in letterheads are very important, there are lots of types and thickness of paper that can be used depending on style and design of the actual letter. I spoke to a company Marqetspace, they mass produce trade printing from business cards to letterheads to flyers and asked them to send me examples of the different types of paper that they print on. A couple of things i learnt from actually receiving the products were that thickness generally provides the user with a sense of quality and luxury while the opposite is said for the thinner pieces of paper.

Above are pictures of all the different cards that they sent me and it allowed me to actually touch the cards, feel the material and have a deeper understanding of how they different card effects the overall feel of the brand. I found the “600gsm uncoated” card to feel the most professional out of all the examples I was given.

This is the book which had a sample of all the different card types from G.F. Smiths which had a bigger selection to choose from. In this book I was given during my visit there is a large collection of different colours, transparencies, gloss, coating, thicknesses and materials. I selected my favourites, cut them out the book and you can see them here;

The first one that I decided I liked was the Softy White 380gms, the reason for this is that the thickness makes it feel like it has a real luxury quality to it. The front is covered with a soft fabric which makes it nice to touch, if a clever design was printed on the front it would make it a really interesting card.

The second one I chose the Peregrina Classics 336gsm because its reflective shade of red on the front making it stands out from all the other materials in the book. It still has a quality thickness and comes across as very professional card before it’s even been printed on.

Another nice material was the woodside garden pine, this is styles as wood and you can seed it almost blends in with my wooden table, the only issue with this card is that there isn’t much of a contrast between the silver typography which makes it difficult to read, especially in low light conditions. That being said the thickness is the highest at 398gsm so it does have a quality feel, so it would depend on your trade as to whether you wanted to use this card.

The most professional of the cards I liked was the Loreenzo White 220 gsm as it was a plain white card with a very subtle design on it using a very small layer of fibres on it. This card is probably the one out of the four that would be most widely used in the market as it isn’t too extreme and can easily be printed on.

It is important to have a creative business card design as it would help promote you and make you look better than your competitor if your card is better than theirs. First impressions count, and the right business cards will improve that. A good card works around of the them of area of business, this fitness trainer has hit the nail on the head by allowing the client to tear of the fat mans stomach to make them thinner – the whole purpose of going to gym.

The design below is really interesting and could be used as inspiration for my business card as my logo is a graph, It could be a purple card in a black envelope which has holes in the shape of my logo. Then when the card is pulled out they have my details on the back. This card gives the client a nice visual experience.

Again relating the card to you specific business is what the best business cards do, you can see this picture frame company business card uses a frame with the details printed on the back;

This plumber has created miniature plungers with his details as one way to stand out from the rest, so there are a ways to stand out out that dont even use the tradition print method, this is an interesting way;

This business card is very professional as instead of being made from paper it is actually made from dried meat which suits the company perfectly as they work in there area of survival training.

References:

http://www.peppermintprint.co.uk/products/letterheads/

Wyke Printers company visit

To understand the process of creating a physical hand out like a business card or letterhead, I found it was vital to research the companies that produce these things. I organised a visit to G.F. Smith, the paper manufacturer and Wyke Printers.

One of the first things I learnt when being showed around Wyke Printers was about the ‘blueprint’, a paper cutout of anything that needs to be folded and cut to create a certain shape. The photo below shows the blueprint design for a folder that the company Lincat are paying Wyke printing for. You can see the design has dotted lines for folds and hard lines to be cut. The layout of the content is shown as it would be so that should there be any mistakes, they can be easily resolved. There are many machines in the building that do lot’s of different jobs, things like stapling books together, printing, checking colour levels  etc.

Along the top of each piece of paper printed, there is a set of colour codes which are read by the computer system, this will determine whether each machine has the correct amount of each colour in it. Wyke use CMYK (reason for this has been mentioned in previous research). You can see the numbers on the machine actually match up to the different colour sets on the paper.

Finally I shared the initial ideas for my self promotion material, and was shown the piece of equipment you can see below, if I was to create my designs on a mass scale, I would use a printing press, this basically is laid out like the blueprint you can see at the beginning of this post and will make the relevant scores and cuts on the paper, this saves time and money. Then all that needs to happen is the relevant folds, glue and and then they are shipped to the customer. This is obviously ideal and has shaped the way I will arrange my designs. This is the press I was shown: