Truly Deeply/Madly

I recently received my first ever, per­son­alised busi­ness card due the launch of our excit­ing new agency brand for Truly Deeply. Up until this point I have been rep­re­sent­ing myself in meet­ings with­out a busi­ness card, believ­ing my per­son­al­ity and designs skills would carry the day. The dif­fer­ence is amaz­ing. A busi­ness card is noth­ing short of an essen­tial first con­tact when meet­ing a client, or any­one else you’re going to be doing busi­ness with for the first time. It is an expres­sion of you and your brand. It also has an endur­ing role as a reminder for clients of who you are and what posi­tion you have within a company.

Here are our 4  key tips on the art of busi­ness card design.

1/ First Impres­sions Count
Busi­ness cards are an effec­tive tool to reflect your busi­nesses and per­sonal brand. If meet­ing a poten­tial client it is all about first impres­sions, even down to the small details such as your busi­ness card. Research in the US found that the per­cep­tion of the qual­ity of the busi­ness and it’s prod­ucts and ser­vices after a first meet­ing were directly influ­enced by the qual­ity of the design and pro­duc­tion of the busi­ness cards exchanged. You know what they say; ‘you only get one chance to make a good first impression.’

Below is the busi­ness cards we designed for Gelati Sky. Gelati Sky is a bou­tique, pre­mium gelati brand. Gelati Sky has a strong per­son­al­ity and sto­ry­line dri­ven out of Gelati Sky’s founder Paul Scalisi’s mem­o­ries of grow­ing up in Rome, eat­ing gelati – ‘a world where every moment seemed frozen in an amaz­ing sen­sory assault and every cloud in the sky made you feel it was about to rain gelato’. We were look­ing for some­thing that was unique, rep­re­sented his story and would cre­ate con­ver­sa­tion. The com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form of ‘it’s what dreams taste like’ was born out of the brand strat­egy def­i­n­i­tion for we con­ducted for  Gelati Sky. The busi­ness cards designed for Gelati Sky reflected this propo­si­tion and looked almost good enough to eat themslelves.

2/ End­less Pos­si­bil­i­ties
There are a tonne of things to take into con­sid­er­a­tion when design­ing a busi­ness card. You have end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties in card pro­duc­tion and fin­ish with cus­tomised shapes, die-cuts, spot UV, emboss­ing, matte fin­ish­ing, card mate­r­ial (paper/wood/metal), paper tex­ture and paper weight. This list of options must be care­fully con­sid­ered when design­ing a busi­ness card.

Below is an exam­ple of metal­lic foil used on the entire face of the busi­ness card that we designed for FAME. FAME is an inte­grated mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tancy with a focus on fash­ion. The team at FAME are vibrant, dynamic and on trend, offer­ing a huge range of inte­grated ser­vices includ­ing brand man­age­ment, strate­gic and retail mar­ket­ing, event man­age­ment, cre­ative ser­vices and pub­lic­ity. We designed the busi­ness card to reflect FAME’s mar­ket propo­si­tion of fash­ion­able, pre­mium and dynamic. The busi­ness card has gold foil printed on curios touch paper for a pre­mium feel. As a fin­ish and paper stock, this card is a more expen­sive exam­ple, but what bet­ter way to project a pre­mium image?

3/ Unique
Hav­ing a busi­ness card is all well and good, every­one has one (now that I have one). The true lever­ag­ing power of a great busi­ness card comes from a busi­ness card that is truly unique.

Below is a busi­ness card we designed for a com­pany called Forum5. Forum5 rep­re­sents a new model of artist and tal­ent man­age­ment and required a busi­ness card that stood out in an indus­try where tal­ent is typ­i­cally bom­barded with busi­ness cards. Dri­ven out of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form of Tal­ent Part­ner­ships we cre­ated a book of per­fo­rated busi­ness cards–the tal­ent receives one half of the card with Forum5’s con­tact details, but the talent’s details are also taken, writ­ten on the part of the card that remains with the Forum5 staff mem­ber. The cer­e­mony of tear­ing the card and tak­ing details becomes a brand ges­ture demon­strat­ing the unique propo­si­tion of partnership-based tal­ent rela­tion­ships. The cards are also indi­vid­u­ally num­bered, and each month a num­ber is drawn and the per­son who received that card is invited to a lunch with Forum5 founder Mark Richard­son. The idea cre­ates a nice ‘touch’ of the­atre in an indus­try big on performances.

4/ You Get What You Pay For
When it comes to busi­ness cards you get what you pay for. An attempt to save money on this com­mu­ni­ca­tions tool will almost always deliver an image for you and your com­pany that looks less than pro­fes­sional. Your busi­ness card is an impor­tant expres­sion of your brand and it should be designed by pro­fes­sion­als who take the time to under­stand what your brand stands for. Impor­tantly it should be designed by some­one capa­ble of trans­lat­ing your desired brand posi­tion­ing into a 55mm x 90mm piece of potent brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion which is both on brand and distinctive.

Here is two exam­ples of strate­gi­cally dri­ven busi­ness card designs. GXY Search and Jane the Agency. You can take a peek at our strate­gic approach to design­ing the GXY Search brand iden­tity here.

If you see the need to update your sta­tionery or busi­ness card and need help in defin­ing what your busi­ness should be lever­ag­ing, please give us a call.

Tim Wood
Design Creative

Here are some more exam­ples of great busi­ness card design. Enjoy!

www.christinecelic.com

www.woodsandweather.com

www.graphic-exchange.com

www.visuelle.co.uk

www.designbypraline.com

www.yesstudio.co.uk

http://saffron-consultants.com/featured-work/octopus-travel/

http://www.un.titled.co.uk/#/brand14

http://www.de-war.de/

Tags: 5-tips-to-business-card-design, Brand Design, brand designers, Brand Personality, Brand Strategy, brand-designers-Melbourne, brand-values, Business card, business-card-design, Corporate Image, design-creative, FAME, forum5, Gelati-Sky, GXY Search, jane, Jane the agency, the-art-of-business-card-design, tim-wood, Truly Deeply

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