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BUSINESS CARD LAYOUT AND DESIGN BASICS
The primary purpose of a business card is for someone to be able to contact you
by telephone when they are in need of your services. This may sound very obvious,
but it’s amazing how many useless business cards we’ve printed over the
years because the customer thought it was really cool! It’s not really
necessary and, in fact, it will hinder your audience if you clutter your card
with lots of extraneous copy. Simply put: don’t try to put the Gettysburg Address on
the head of a pin! It’s only a little 3-1/2" x 2" piece of paper and you shouldn’t try to make
your clients or potential clients work to find out how to reach you. Your
telephone number (hopefully only one) should be easy to read and ideally, be
in one of the corners or near a corner of the card rather than surrounded by
a bunch of other information or body copy.
REMEMBER — KEEP IT SIMPLE!
- DON'T GET TOO ARTSY.
Sometimes designers will do all sorts of “cute” things to a business card
like put bullets between every digit in a phone number or stack the area code
above the prefix which is above the rest of the number. Remember the purpose of
your card—and if someone has a hard time finding your number because it’s
embedded in the rest of the copy or treated with a wild design, it will probably
get thrown away before it’s ever used for the intended purpose.
- DON'T PUT A ZILLION PHONE NUMBERS ON YOUR CARD.
Once again, some folks think that by putting three, four or more telephone
numbers on a card they give the impression that they are really easy to get in
touch with, but the result is confusing to the card holder...which number do I
call? And if I’m unsuccessful at the first one, do I have to call the other
three? Why make your client work so hard to reach you? It is, however, perfectly
OK to publish multiple numbers when they are different modes of communication
such as voice, fax, e-mail or pager, and are identified as such. Often listing both
a business and home or residence phone is appropriate. However, you may not want
everyone to have your home phone, so why not leave it off entirely? That way
you can hand write it on the card and, even if you do give it out to everyone, the
recipient will get the impression that they are special and have a way to contact you
that no one else has!
It can also be equally confusing to a client to have multiple addresses listed on a card.
If you have several locations, it’s best to publish the address of the main
location or the one you’re most likely to be at and list only the towns
of the other offices in small type as bullet points.
- USE WHITE SPACE.
Another pet peeve . . . folks often want to fill up every nook and cranny on the
card with information. An old rule of thumb for business card design is that
you should at least be able to put a quarter on it somewhere and not cover up any
copy. In other words, white space or blank areas will help the reader find the
necessary information.
- DON'T MAKE YOUR CARD A BROCHURE.
Instead of listing each and every product you represent or service you provide,
consider printing a separate brochure, flyer or line card to tell your story.
Once again, too much clutter will deter your client from getting in touch with you.
- STAY AWAY FROM ODD SIZES AND FOLDOVERS.
Don’t get fooled by thinking an oversized card will get you noticed faster. It
won’t fit in a standard business card file and will probably only get thrown away.
Likewise, most folks don’t like foldovers because they take up too much room
and they usually don’t even bother to read all that copy you spent so much time
composing anyway. Save it for a company brochure or pamphlet. If you want something
to stand out from the rest of the crowd, consider a card with a vertical instead of
a horizontal layout.
- GENERALLY SPEAKING, BACKPRINTING IS A WASTE OF MONEY.
Once again, the whole idea is...who is this and how do I get a hold of them?
Product lines, calendars, conversion charts and other information printed on
the back generally don’t get read. For professional practices like doctors,
dentists and therapists, printing an appointment card on the back of a standard
business card DOES make sense, though.
- DON'T GET CUTE WITH PROFOUND SAYINGS OR MOTTOS.
Trite sayings, famous quotes and other verbage of like kind probably don’t
do a thing to enhance your card. It’s doubtful that it ever becomes the
deciding factor for someone choosing your card over another. Company mottos,
when normally identified with the firm, however, can be added as long as they
are kept small and do not deter the reader from finding the important data.
While it may seem that we have beat this topic to death, we cannot overemphasize
how much more effective a simple, well-designed business card is over one with
too much information that makes it difficult to reach you.
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