To create professional business cards, you have to consider layout, fonts, images & shapes, and colors. It’s not always an easy task. In this guide, we’ll take deeper look at these core elements.
LAYOUT
This is where planning helps the most. Visualize the final product and the finished look! It’s important to consider the message you want to deliver and how your target audience will perceive you based on the business card. Once you’ve taken notes on that, gather all the content for the business card… Everything that will appear on the front and back.
FONTS
While there are no bright-line rules to follow, there are some general guiding principles that deliver great results! Here are few things to keep in mind:
- choose fonts that are easy to read;
- limit your choices to 2 fonts;
- name should generally be larger than other text;
- avoid going below 7 pt. as it becomes difficult to read; and
- consistency is key, so try using the same font size.
IMAGES & SHAPES
Generally, the only image on a business card is the logo. But, adding another image or shape may add some interest or attract attention to your card. Keep in mind, that those shapes and images should be consistent with your branding. Also important to note is that images & shapes integrate well with the colors you use.
COLORS
It is key to choose the right colors that reflect your brand. You logo on the card should be integrated well with any other colors or shapes. You may want to consider the emotions that colors communicate such as Red may suggest passion or aggression and black may be associated with mystery, unknown, elegance, or professionalism. Finally, it’s important set the color mode of your design file to CMYK (printers use this mode for better contrast). Here is how you can do it:
- Photoshop: Image > Mode > CMYK Color
- Illustrator: File > Document Color Mode > CMYK Color
Finally, be sure to set your resolution to at least 300 DPI and we recommend exporting the file to a PNG, JPG, JPEG, or EPS.
Hope this is helpful. Good luck designing!
