Mark Boulton

29 Responses to “What makes a good business card?”

1. 
   Zach Inglis said on: February 1st, 2006 at 5:08 pm

   Clean, crisp, read­able, rememberable. 

   I also had a reason dis­cus­sion with someone who didn’t like the size of my card (I opted for a wider but shorter height wise size). Explain­ing it bugged them loads. 

   Mine are: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachinglis/40448251/

2. 
   Nathan Rutman said on: February 1st, 2006 at 5:09 pm

   I think a lot of times “con­ven­tions” are a lot like stand­ards.  For busi­ness cards, using con­ven­tional place­ment for inform­a­tion or con­ven­tional design helps people recog­nize the data easily. 

   Ulti­mately, this has to be derived from the brand.  If the com­pany is all about edgy-ness and break­ing con­ven­tions, then a con­ven­tional busi­ness card will not serve them.  But if the cli­ent is all about pro­fes­sion­al­ism and excel­lent exe­cu­tion in a tough mar­ket, then a more “con­ven­tional” busi­ness card might be exactly what fits.

   It’s hard to make a blanket statement.

3. 
   jakobw said on: February 1st, 2006 at 5:09 pm

   I’m ask­ing myself the same thing as in the pro­cess of mak­ing some. Some pretty far-out examples I’ve seen have been trapezoid shaped, prin­ted to look like an old (large) cinema ticket, hand prin­ted with a rub­ber stamp, etc. My old one had a 2/3 fold, so that it could stand on a sur­face, but was still thin enough to use ‘as nor­mal’ in a wallet. 

   Like you say, depends on your busi­ness and what you want to con­vey. A friends com­pany have stand­ard, above-average look­ing ones but play around with titles, call­ing design­ers ‘paint­ers’ and developers ‘build­ers’ and so on.

   One thing I’ve seen that I quite like (and very few seem to have) is a draw­ing or photo.

4. 
   Anthony said on: February 1st, 2006 at 5:36 pm

   I stumbled on this use for busi­ness cards last week via Digg. 

   The art­icle is a bit pre­ten­tious, but I think the car­toons are an inter­est­ing idea.

5. 
   Andy said on: February 1st, 2006 at 6:18 pm

   I think there’s some­thing to be said for adher­ing to the size stand­ards (of your country).

   While novel sizes–or shapes, like circles–can be more excit­ing or ‘mem­or­able’, if it doesn’t fit into a card holder or wal­let, it’s likely to get lost. 

   As to the design, I think proper heir­archy of ele­ments is more import­ant than pos­i­tion­ing, although pos­i­tion­ing cer­tainly adds weight to the heirarchy.

6. 
   Brady J. Frey said on: February 1st, 2006 at 6:58 pm

   I’ve always sub­scribed to the idea that busi­ness cards are quick first impressions—they should adhere to your brand­ing stand­ards, clearly define your con­tact inform­a­tion, and grab the users atten­tion in a few brief seconds… much like a web page.

   For smal­ler com­pan­ies on a budget, I typ­ic­ally advise using it as an oppor­tun­ity to pitch a little more mar­ket­ing on the back or front, so it becomes a little more use­ful than the stand­ard card and cost effect­ive — large com­pan­ies can get away with more sparse designs since bcards aren’t so much a hard mar­ket­ing tool as they are a means to spread who to call/email/fax. 

   I have other the­or­ies on print qual­ity vs pro­cesses, but that’s com­ing from an old print designer who knows how to run those machines, and isn’t web design discussion:)

7. 
   Terry Tolleson said on: February 1st, 2006 at 7:07 pm

   I believe a busi­ness card should (at the very least) have 3 ele­ments on it (in order of importance): 

   1) Con­tact Inform­a­tion
   
   2) Com­pany Name

   3) Visual iden­ti­fier for the com­pany (logo or some­thing very strongly con­nec­ted to your company) 

   What makes a suc­cess­ful busi­ness card, in my opin­ion, is the availability/readability of the con­tact inform­a­tion. This is the crit­ical por­tion of any busi­ness card. People dig through their rolo­dexes look­ing for a person’s/company’s num­ber, email, mail­ing address, etc. Not just for the card with the len­ticular print­ing on the back. 

   Regard­less how flashy or clever your card is, if con­tact inform­a­tion is not read­ily avail­able, or quickly pro­cessed, the card failed. What does it mat­ter if someone remembered some neat trick the card does or how nice it looked if they find a hint of dif­fi­culty acquir­ing your inform­a­tion from it. 

   Of course, this is all my opin­ion. I haven’t per­formed stud­ies on this or anything.

8. 
   Chris Radcliff said on: February 1st, 2006 at 7:07 pm

   I’m going through the same pro­cess right now.  To me, it seems like the con­tact inform­a­tion should be lim­ited to the min­imum neces­sary to make con­tact.  A card can get pretty crowded with all the email addresses, IM accounts, phone/fax/cell num­bers you have avail­able.  Leave some room for fun drawings!

9. 
   Richard Browne said on: February 1st, 2006 at 7:23 pm

   I’ve done a couple of designs for busi­ness cards and find that the best ones that extend the company’s brand/image, so that in a pile of busi­ness cards, it’s easy/easier to dis­tin­guish between dif­fer­ent com­pan­ies quickly. 

   I found a really good book, which shows some ‘good’ designs. It’s great for inspir­a­tion if noth­ing else.

10. 
    Keeem said on: February 1st, 2006 at 7:27 pm

    One of the best cards I’ve seen in a very long time, which is a reflec­tion of the nature of the holder’s busi­ness as well as amaz­ingly clever, is the lock­pick card. You can see it at: http://www.jenimattson.com/pages/identity/melvin.shtml

    Kudos to the designer. I think this is just a fab­ulous busi­ness card imho. :)

11. 
    James Shewmaker said on: February 1st, 2006 at 8:18 pm

    In my opin­ion, one of the best busi­ness card designs is this one for Scott Hansen. http://qwerty.us/visual.htm

    1. It shows the logo.
    

    2. It shows the pro­fes­sional.
    
    3. It states what he does.
    
    4. It states his tagline -“Design­ing Breath­ing Spaces.”
    
    5. It con­tains his con­tact inform­a­tion.
    
    6. Its mem­or­able.
    
    7. And I designed it. (grin)

12. 
    Chris Grimley said on: February 1st, 2006 at 11:59 pm

    I can only think of that mem­or­able scene in Amer­ican Psy­cho where they com­pare cards. 

    David Van Pat­ten: [re: busi­ness card] Nice color.
    
    Patrick Bate­man: That’s ‘Bone’.

13. 
    Daniel Harman said on: February 2nd, 2006 at 1:37 am

    One of the most mem­or­able busi­ness cards for me, was Kelly Goto’s card of goto­media (http://www.gotomedia.com/).  Design resembled a tube ticket, com­plete with mag­netic strip.  Nice.

14. 
    Matias said on: February 2nd, 2006 at 2:12 am

    As all des­ignable things, a busi­ness card must serve to the pur­pose it’s meant to (had a name and some data writ­ten on it).
    
    If you can add some­thing, a witty idea or an extra fun­cion­al­ity, for example, it’s fine.
    
    I just remembered that Simpsons’ epis­ode in which someone (a law­yer, i think) gaves Homer an busi­ness card which becomes a sponge when wet.

15. 
    Richard Rutter said on: February 2nd, 2006 at 10:08 am

    If design is your busi­ness then a good look­ing busi­ness card is import­ant. Our busi­ness cards aren’t par­tic­u­larly ground-breaking but people often com­pli­ment them when they are handed over. 

    Busi­ness cards are obvi­ously an exten­sion of your busi­ness into someone else’s world so they need to carry your brand with them. And by brand I mean val­ues as well as logo. So if you’re an uber-creative design agency the card prob­ably needs to break a few rules too. Although it should also serve it primary pur­pose too — that of provid­ing con­tact details.

16. 
    Mark Boulton said on: February 2nd, 2006 at 1:03 pm

    You’re right Richard, if Design is your busi­ness, then the card should reflect that. 

    Reminds of many years ago when I designed some post­age stamps which had a dis­tinctly typo­graphic theme and a mes­sage to com­mu­nic­ate in such a small space. Bit of a night­mare really. 

    A really good card, I feel, is a hard design task. It’s dis­tilling down core brand val­ues, con­tact details with the addi­tion of a witty idea or humour. It has to be mem­or­able, dis­tinct­ive, but fit in your wallet.

17. 
    Mike Stenhouse said on: February 2nd, 2006 at 2:48 pm

    Some­thing I never real­ised until I actu­ally star­ted using busi­ness cards is that they need enough space on them some­where for adding notes… that might be someone else’s email address, a url that the per­son you’re giv­ing the card to might be inter­ested in, per­haps your IM login, whatever. It’s UX for print. 

    A photo is also good. How many times have you gone through your wal­let, found a stray busi­ness card and not been able to remem­ber who that per­son was? A visual reminder is incred­ibly handy. 

    Then there’s the design…!

18. 
    caspian said on: February 2nd, 2006 at 8:55 pm

    ’a photo is always good?’

    ?only if you are good look­ing. I recently designed the cor­por­ate iden­tity for a small makeup com­pany. After com­ple­tion they insisted on their pho­tos being added to their cards. Unfor­tu­nalty the major­ity of the staff were not as beau­ti­ful as their product, which dragged the whole iden­tity down.

19. 
    Galen said on: February 3rd, 2006 at 12:14 am

    In my opin­ion, most busi­ness cards are rather dull. They have a logo and some con­tact inform­a­tion and are gen­er­ally pretty bland and much like all the other busi­ness cards around. 

    I think photos/images are really import­ant as it can turn a busi­ness card into a little work of art. Even if there is not a photo strictly asso­ci­ated with a busi­ness, one can be used that fits in with the feel­ing of the com­pany and which con­veys the mes­sage clearly or cre­ates and impression. 

    Also, one thing I heard a while ago at a small busi­ness con­ven­tion was “put what you do on your card” (or some­thing to that effect). It’s true. How many cards do you see that don’t actu­ally say what they do.… Amongst a slew of other cards in a card wal­let six months later, most people will have for­got­ten what the card was for or what ser­vices they offered. 

    It’s funny but I’ve been want­ing to make little mini bro­chure busi­ness cards for a while and am work­ing on a couple with some of my cli­ents now when, just yes­ter­day, Before & After put out a PDF art­icle on mini busi­ness card-sized bro­chures ([url=http://www.bamagazine.com]http://www.bamagazine.com[/url]).

    You can also see my little fold­ing busi­ness cards (which have become immensely pop­u­lar as a format as a res­ult of these cards where I live) on my web­site at [url=http://www.luciddesign.co.nz]http://www.luciddesign.co.nz[/url] — You might need to refresh or click around a couple of times as the images are loaded randomly. 

    Good dis­cus­sion topic by the way, Mark. 

    P.S. Mark, Live Pre­view doesn’t seem to work on Safari.

20. 
    Kyle said on: February 3rd, 2006 at 5:12 am

    I’ve always been fond of the busi­ness cards that the guys at Bright Corner designed.  Mem­or­able, unique, and allows for that crit­ical space to writeon. 

    http://www.garrettdimon.com/archives/down-with-titles

21. 
    Veerle Pieters said on: February 3rd, 2006 at 11:08 am

    It’s hard to explain what makes a good busi­ness card. The very first thing that comes to mind is that it has to look pro­fes­sional and that it must reflect the com­pany image. Try to go for clear­ness and other then that play with some graph­ical ele­ments like I did on mine with the speech bubble thingie. But it all depends on what kind of busi­ness you are deal­ing with, there isn’t a one trick fits all approach I think.

22. 
    h3 said on: February 5th, 2006 at 6:58 pm

    My 2?

    A good busi­ness card is a card that reflect well the cor­por­ate iden­tity of the com­pany while giv­ing quick and easy access of the con­tact informations. 

    The first goal of a busi­ness card is to give someone inform­a­tions about your­self or your busi­ness so that he can con­tact you back when he’ll need it. 

    So a good busi­ness card should anwser at least those questions: 

    1 — who the hell gave me that busi­ness card (per­son or busi­ness)
    
    2 — what kind of ser­vices can I expect to find from that busi­ness
    
    3 — how can i con­tact them 

    The rest is just about cre­ativ­ity and should be eval­u­ated on a case per case basis. 

    But still, there is some good and bad ideas when cre­at­ing a busi­ness card. 

    BAD
    

    - non stand­ard formats: cli­ents tend to trash them more quickly since most of them won’t fit in their wal­let or where they usu­ally put them.
    
    - your spe­cial of the month: put­ting sales inform­a­tions is gen­er­ally a very bad idea since the prices or stocks tend to changes AND it is way bey­ond the util­ity of a busi­ness card. The one who should be selling is the one that gives the card and gets the calls, not the busi­ness card.
    
    - extra­vag­ant and flashy designs:
    
    Ok, in some situ­ation it can be good (like if your cor­por­ate iden­tity is too), but most of the time, visu­als effect com­pete with the information. 

    GOOD
    
    - roun­ded corners looks good longer.
    
    - mat lam­in­age don’t tend to leave

    fat fin­ger­prints.
    
    - A clever design with qual­ity mater­i­als often reflect an healty and ser­i­ous com­pany.
    
    - To much inform­a­tion: if you have to much to say, make a web site and put the url on your card, if the cli­ent really want more inform­a­tions, he will find it.. or call you. 

    cheers

23. 
    Graham Sanders said on: February 10th, 2006 at 11:17 pm

    It’s simple as these 2 words 

    effect­ive communication

24. 
    Graham Sanders said on: February 10th, 2006 at 11:47 pm

    Use­ful inspiration: 

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1856693864
    
    (i own this book it’s great. Tip never buy from Magma as it’s ?19.95 there and only ?13.16 in Amazon) 

    http://www.method.com
    
    work > brand and identity

    Whatever you design for a busi­ness card must be thought out for future applic­a­tions as it has to be used in a con­sist­ent man­ner on other media, be it print or digiatl. 

    Alot so called ‘design­ers’ for­get this but heh that’s the prob­lem nowadays as any­one who can cre­ate a web­site auto­mat­ic­ally thinks they can design for print and sad though it may be the examples in this thread show this inability. 

    .…..

25. 
    Maria P said on: February 15th, 2006 at 11:23 am

    Like so many things around in live to make a busi­ness card is a mat­ter of SIZE. Someone talk me once that any design the will look good if you blow it up to A1 and step back a few steps.
    

    The thing with busi­ness cards is how small and restric­ted space you got to say quiet a few things.
    
    To me func­tion is form so the most impot­ant things would be to DELIVER THE MESSAGE.
    
    For­get about flashy, bashy, mashy expir­able design. Rely on type.
    
    For many of us doing web design size is the chal­lenge. 1px can make a dif­fer­ence. A busi­ness card looks like a foot­ball ground to me since I’m in this industry and it’s pro­blaby one of the most fun pro­jects you can get.
    
    NO? 

    PS: Ahh about the blog on Gill Sans.… sorry to get back to this… is not how many ties you could have in ours days but about how many you ties you NEED in our days.

26. 
    Graham Sanders said on: February 16th, 2006 at 11:58 pm

    When was Gill Sans a tie? 

    Is Futura a sock then?

27. 
    Mark Boulton said on: February 17th, 2006 at 11:07 am

    Gra­ham, I think Maria was refer­ring to the quote from Erik Spiekermann.

28. 
    Maria P said on: February 17th, 2006 at 11:23 am

    Yes, that’s right Markboulton! 

    I was refer­ring to that quote and It was just to com­ment that the typefaces mar­ket is over­load with some­times not-so-nice, not-readables-at-all typefaces.… and who need them when we got Gill Sans 

    I won­der if there is out there any typeface call Heavy Oblique Sock … or Tie New Roman .… 

    :-{

29. 
    Big Dog said on: March 1st, 2006 at 4:10 am

    To do it right today, it must look Web 2.0! :) 

    I find the best cards are those that simply stand out — usu­ally those are bold but simple.