Business Card Design Ideas

When it comes to designing your business card, you need to consider several factors:

1. Will you include your logo? (If you don’t have a logo, you should create one, pronto.)

2. Does your logo include your company’s name? If it doesn’t, you need to decide what kind of font you want your company’s name to be in, along with the rest of your business card font choices. Your company’s name should stand out from the rest of the business card text.

3. What colors do you want to use? If you have colors in your logo, you’ll need to complement those colors with the rest of your business card. If your logo is colorless, choose colors that give off the look and feel of your brand. A baseball stadium using pink or orange for instance, doesn’t quite make as much sense as using green, brown or tan would.

4. What type of paper do you want to use? The heavier your paper, the more polished your business card will look, which will make people think your business is polished. Most business cards are printed on a 76 lb.- to 80 lb.-paper stock.

Once you have decided on these basic questions, you’ll be ready to design! Here are some design ideas to make your custom business cards effective.

Design your business card to read vertically instead of horizontally

This is an easy way to change up your business card design that will attract attention. Most business cards are designed horizontally because that’s the way they are stored in wallets, Rolodexes and other business card holders.

However, as long as you have a simple, striking design using a font that is easy to read, you can pull off the vertical design without making your card hard to read. You don’t want everyone craning their necks to read your vertical card in their Rolodex, so design it with simple, bold fonts and graphics.

Use a folded card

A folded card is the shape of a business card when folded, but with a panel you can lift to reveal info underneath. This design works well for businesses that offer a lot of services or products that most people don’t know about. If your company’s name doesn’t hint at what it does, like “XYZ Corp.”, you can place your usual info on the outside of the folded panel and then include a slogan and/or a list of what you offer on the inside fold.

Have your text trace a path

This is easiest and most effective for simple shapes, like a wave or a rooftop. Just design your words (most likely your slogan) to follow a curvy line or to trace what looks like a gently rolling wave or a rooftop with a chimney on top.

Special text effects

Using a special metallic ink that catches the light will make people look twice at your business card. Anything you can do to add visual spice, like embossing for texture or using foil stamping to color your text will make people want to hold on to your card.