Keep Your Business Cards from Becoming Trash- 5 Vital Design Tips

“I am awesome, my business is too, and you should check me out! Here’s my card.”

You know you have them – right from the word “hello” you had them listening until you handed them your card. You saw the look after they glanced over it and knew right away; the executives at ABC Inc. will never contact you. All the hard work, your pitch, your brilliant ideas will be forgotten because you have failed; correct that, your business card design has failed to impress your customers.

Your design was bad, now what?

You rack your brain and try to blame the graphic designer you hired, but eventually you have to admit your card sucked because you failed to grasp the importance of a good business card design. A good design needs contents (copy, tagline, information) to work with the layout (color, and proportion).  It’s an attractive presentation of your brand identity. Your card should match your brand.

Image Source: ThinkStock/Brookebecker

Stop wasting your time designing cards that no one will keep!  Keep these 5 crucial elements in mind when designing your business card least they get chucked in the bin.

1. “Size matters” should be your motto

Needless to say dimension helps, in terms of printing, portability, and aesthetics. Here are the important dimensions to know in business card design:

• Common Business Card size is 84mm x 55mm
• Best size to work: 1039 x 697 pixels
• Images are at least 300dpi for high quality results
• 5mm thick border on edge of the design, same color as card background. This prevents bleeding borders.

2. Printers catch designers red-handed

Numerous beginner designers choose the RGB color mode since the colors appear first-rate on the computer screen. However, when it comes time to print, the colors that appeared fine suddenly become fuzzy and distorted on the printed card.

Don’t let your designer or printer talk you into RGB. CMYK is the best color mode for printing because it will mask color on a light or white background, reducing the amount and color of the light reflected by the paper.

But don’t go crazy with the colors! Stick to one or two colors.

3. I can’t read your font

Your font needs to be 8pt size or larger, fonts smaller than 8pt will become smudged when printed.

Your design’s typeface needs a crisp and clear, comprehensible font. Professional designers carefully consider typography because of its huge impact on design. Selecting a typeface is difficult, so be sure to match your brand or the brand you are designing. Take the opportunity to really show your personality and character.

Bonus Tip: Show your design to somebody before printing. Ask for honesty. Does it look simple and clean? Can they quickly figure out who you (or your client) are?

4. Material matters

Think carefully about the material you want to print your business cards on. If it is on plastic or laminated material, it’s impossible to write on with a pen!

My recommendation is to choose plain material so people can write a little useful note about your encounter. A thick, smooth stock or using a recycled, pure stock, with the highest quality printing can make a long-lasting impression. They will be more likely to contact you.

5. Are you smart phone app friendly?

Try to design your card with smart phone apps in mind.

Nowadays, business card apps scan the card and do character recognition on the image to translate the contents to text, and then store the image of the card on your phone. If your card can’t be scanned, your information won’t be stored!

The next time you consider designing a business card, keep the above elements in mind. Look for inspiration, try to build a picture collection on Pinterest or check out other popular designer portfolios to see what is trending. Notice what elements you liked about them, why they caught your eye, and blend those into your own design. Steal a good idea!

Business cards today come in all shapes and sizes, but I think the traditional format still wins out for functionality and effectiveness. Are you traditional or unique designers? Tell us in the comments. I would love to hear your thoughts!