10 Essential Tips for Great Business Card Design

Your business card is the item in your marketing toolbox, but one of the most powerful – if you have it designed effectively. It’s easy to put a logo, company name and your contact details onto a card and hope people like it and respond. Business card design does not have to be difficult or complicated.

A great business card has to do more than that. A great business card should immediately take the attention of the person you give it to. A great business card should impress them with your professionalism, and your brand style. A great business card doesn’t just go into a pocket, get left in a desk drawer, or worse go straight into the trash. A really great, professionally designed business card speaks directly to their problem, attracts them to read, and pushes them to take action and contact you.

So just what elements combine to make a really effective business card?

From a marketing perspective, it comes down to three key components: a unique concept, an attractive and relevant design, and a compelling message. When these things come together people will not just take your card, they will admire it, and keep it.

Sounds good? Then let’s take a look at the most important factors in getting that great design.

1. Just what things really need to be on a business card?

The primary purpose of your business card is to get your contact details into the hands of people who want your product or service. There are so many things that you could put on your card, but space is limited and communication must be clear. You can’t overwhelm your target audience and still expect good response rates.
What you should include:

• Your logo (always join all of your marketing together with a great professionally designed logo)
• Your name (keep it simple, no titles unless they are relevant to your market)
• Your job title or position (impress, entertain, indicate your business structure)
• Your email address (think about which one is most relevant)
• Your phone number (potentially with international code)
• Your website URL (your online home, and the hub where they get all of your content)
• Any relevant social media IDs (your main 1 – 3 IDs are enough, don’t overwhelm)

This is enough for them to check you out, passively follow you, or directly connect if they are ready to take action.

Other elements / information you might consider adding are:

• QR codes (great for saving time, also for linking directly to campaigns, website and social media, or special content)
• Images (a good clear picture may really sell your product or service)
• Personal photo / headshot (some industries love this, some don’t, know your market)
• You company’s slogan (confirm they have found what they are looking for)
•  

2. Keep Your Audience in Mind

A lot of people make their business cards look good to them. They choose the colors they want, the fonts they want, and essentially create a design that suits them.

But remember the final destination of your business card: your recipient. They might have different tastes or expectations.

Think about who is going to receive your business card. What can you say write on your card that touches their problems? What is going to serve their needs? This is much more effective that creating something that you think is attractive.

An important point to remember is that your audience is personal. You can’t speak to everyone at once and hope that they all have the same problems at the same time. It’s easy to want to create a neutral business card that’s suitable for everyone, but this often appeals to no one.

3. Reinforce Your Brand

When a person receives your card, they will see your logo, colors, and fonts. When they start following the contact links to your website, your social media, your online stores, will they see the same logo, colors and design style?

Each step should be designed to imprint your branding in their memory, taking advantage of repeated exposure to increasing the probability that they will decide to take action and engage with you. The branding should also be consistent so that they can quickly recognize and follow links, and not feel confused about which company or organization they are engaging with.

This true for a general corporate branding, for each employee, and for each product or service. Whatever you create a card for should be obviously This also ties into employee branding. If you’re creating a set of business cards for a number of different employees, you can connect them all together with company branding while adding it personal details to make them individual.

4. Get Creative and Stand Out

At business events there is usually a lot of business card swapping. That means people end up going home with stacks of cards that, let’s face it, often sit getting dusty on their desk until they can be bothered to chuck them away.

This is why it’s important to have a business card that stands out in a pile of others, and the best way to do that is to get creative.

Instead of just putting your details and brand colors onto a regular square card, you might want to spice things up by trying out the latest business card trends. You can give the edges a colorful paint wash so they stand out when they’re in a stack, or you might choose to die-cut your card into a weird and wonderful shape.

5. Keep It Simple

Earlier we mentioned not putting too much information on your card, and the same should go for design details, too – you want people to actually be able to read your business card.

Minimalism is on trend in the design world at the moment, which is perfect for making a good, strong first impression without overwhelming the recipient. Remember, they’ll likely have loads of business cards to sift through, so if yours is easy-to-understand and focuses on just the key details, you’ll be more likely to get an email.

6. Consider Your Message

Think for a moment about the lasting impression you want your business card to have: how do you want recipients to think about you when you’re no longer talking to them?

Consider a professional law firm that uses a cartoon font on their business cards and clashing bright colors. That’s unlikely to send out the professional, elegant vibe the company is hoping for.

This is why it’s important to choose a design that fits your brand and message; if you’re a playful business, feel free to go crazy with color and other fun elements, but if you’re a corporate business that relies on professional connections, you’re better off keeping things neat and smart.

7. Make Your Business Card MORE Than Just a Business Card

Yes, your business card should be a physical transaction of contact details, but the possibilities are endless.

When you consider that 88% of business cards get thrown away, standing out has never been more important – or, at least, giving your business card that extra edge so that people don’t want to throw it away.

There are plenty of ways you can give your card more than one purpose, like adding a list of industry tips on the back, have it turn into a paper airplane or a tiny desk box, turn it into a name tag or use any of these unconventional ideas. This will make recipients more likely to remember it and, most importantly, less likely to throw it in the trash.

8. Choose Your Specifications Carefully

Contrary to popular belief, business cards don’t have to be rectangular pieces of card – they can essentially be anything you want them to be!

When choosing your specifications, make sure they align with the message you want to send out and the audience who will be receiving them.

Specifications can mean everything from what size you want your business card to be (though bear in mind that most people will put them straight in their pockets), the orientation of the card, any custom cuts, and the material you will use.

9. Make It Easy to Replicate

It can be difficult to streamline making large quantities of personal business cards for a company. By using a service that makes it easy to replicate the process can save a ton of time and energy.

Brandly is a free solution that helps businesses who are suffering through the tiring process of ordering business cards for multiple employees. With streamlined ordering workflows that adapt to each client, employee self-service, a 1-minute company-wide roll-out, and free shipping on every order, Brandly automates the process making ordering of high-quality business cards a breeze.

10. Leave a Lasting Impression

A business card that wows leaves a lasting impression.

Once you’ve chosen your specifications, the message you want to send out, and a design that reflects the rest of your brand, it’s time to add the finishing touches because, after all, the beauty is in the detail.

This means ensuring your business cards have the perfect finish. Getting them professionally printed can mean the difference between your business card being eye-catching or amateur and forgettable while making sure it’s readable means you won’t miss out on people contacting you because they don’t understand your details.

A Business Card is More Than Just a Business Card

Your business card is so much more than just a piece of paper with your contact details on. You could almost say it’s an extension of you and your business, and by making sure you reflect that in the design and concept, you’re giving your card the best chance at standing out in a sea of others.

People leave business events with business cards flooding their pockets, most of which will get thrown away before they’ve even properly looked at them.

If you want to make sure yours isn’t one of those, keep it simple but eye-catching with a creative design that fully embodies the messaging of your business.

And remember, the beauty is in the detail. Think about how you want recipients to remember you long after you’ve handed them your business card. This will fuel the concept, design, and messaging on your card and help you make a lasting impression.

If you’re ready to make your business cards stand out and leave a lasting impression, sign up for our newsletter. We’ll send you more tips and tricks on how to design business cards with the “wow” factor.