What Makes a Good Business Card?

One of the easiest ways to promote your business offline is sharing a business with those you meet who express interest in what you do. If you want to be taken seriously however, it’s necessary to have a professional looking business card that reflects your brand’s tone and aesthetic.

In this blog post, I’m going to walk you through what your business card should include, how to go about designing it, and how to go about getting it printed. At the end of this post, I’ll include a link to some templates that will help guide you in determining a layout and keeping your margins the right size.

Content

First things first, you want to determine what information should be included on your business card. The most important things are a brief explanation for what your business is and a way of contacting you. Without these, if people pull out your business card, they may not remember why they took it in the first place, or how to reach you even if they wanted to. If you own a brick and mortar store nearby, an address may be acceptable, but if you do any business non-locally, you really should include an email and a phone number. There’s no shortage of people out there who still rarely use their emails or hate making phone calls, so having both are important.

Since your card doesn’t have much space, it’s important to not overload it with information. That's why it’s necessary to include the what your business does element of your business card in a strategic way. If the type of business you operate is clearly stated in your company name such as Wyatt Goodell Design, or John Kaufman Plumbing, including it somewhere else is entirely unnecessary and might even feel somewhat redundant. If your business name is something more ambiguous like Goodman Production Company then you could either include a short blurb about your company’s purpose, or better yet, clarify what it is you do in your job title. If your position is listed as photographer or video editor suddenly what you do is made clear.

Additionally, if you have a website or social media, it is best to include those as well. If someone with your card doesn’t have a clear idea of what you do or whether they’re interested, they probably won’t immediately jump to contacting you. A website serves as a means by which they can look into your work further and determine if your goods or service are right for them. Even if you don’t get a sale directly from handing out your business card, it can still lead to one farther down the road this way.

Design

One thing that I was taught growing up was that if you don’t treat your work like it’s worth something, you can’t expect other people to. Perceived value is almost everything, at least when it comes to getting people in the door. Having a well designed business card is one of the best ways to show people that your business is not only worth their time, but their money as well.

To keep your business card easy to read, you want to avoid spreading out relevant contact information across the card. One side should be dedicated solely to the company logo, title, and sometimes your name. If your company doesn’t have a logo yet, it may be best to either just put the company name, or to do a double sided business card with the same information on both sides.

Size

The standard size for a business card in North America is 3.5 x 2 inches, whereas in the UK the standard would be 8.5 x 5.5 centimeters. With that said, nothing is preventing you from doing something atypical. A miniature business card or a square business card can really make your card stand out in a pile. One thing to note however is that many people keep business cards in their wallet, so it’s best to be considerate of how they’re used. A card that’s just slightly taller than 2 inches might be easier to find in your wallet, but a 3.5 x 3.5 inch square would be a pain to store

When sizing text for a business card, it may be tempting to do a standard type size like 11pt or 12pt, but no one reads business cards at the same distance they’d a magazine. Type sizes between 6pt and 9pt would read much nicer, and prevent the card from looking too cluttered or horsey. The best thing you can do to determine a font size is to print out your business card at true scale on normal printer paper just to see how it feels to read. Looking at type on a screen can really screw your perception of what looks natural.

Color

Colors are just as important for the legibility of typography as text size. It’s generally best to make sure that your text color leans to the dark size whereas your background color is pale. Alternatively, you can have light colored text on a dark background. If you do, it’s best to use a thicker font as thin type can sometimes be hard to read on a dark background. Another good idea is to pick colors on opposite sides of the color wheel. While this isn’t a hard rule, it can help with the contrast. Just be careful, because if your colors are too bright and on opposite sides of the color wheel, you run the risk of getting something that looks too loud and garish.

If you want to know more about picking colors, I’ll be writing another post specifically about that topic in the next couple of months, so be sure to check back now and then for new posts on design

Printing

The cost of getting business cards printed isn’t terrible so long as you get them in large enough runs. Depending on the size of your business, that may or may not be practical however. Here, I’m going to go over a few of the options available to you for a variety of price ranges.

Online Printing

Nowadays, there’s no shortage of places online to get your business cards printed. One of the best places to do it online, and the place that I used to get my own printed is Moo.com. Moo has a wide range of different paper types and a lot of freedom when it comes to how your card is printed. This include things like painted edges which can make your card stand out more in a wallet, a variety of card shapes, and letter pressed cards that can bevel and emboss your logo. If none of those things appeal to you but you still want to get cards printed online, then don’t fret. There’s plenty of options available to you online, and I’d encourage you to search for whatever option works best for you.

Local Printing

Before looking at any other option, I’d recommend searching your area for local printing companies. If there’s a lot of businesses in your local area, especially if there’s a college or another business that mails out a lot of customer made information, there is almost certainly a printing company there as well that does their printing for them. Business cards are a relatively standard service to offer, but even if they don’t list it on their website, try contacting them about it since they likely have the means to make what you’re looking for. Not only does this help cut the cost of shipping, but they may have a local discount and you get to support another local business in the process.

DIY

If you have a nice color printer and don’t need more than just a few business cards at a time, doing it yourself may be the most practical way of doing things. It may seem intimidating, but all you really need is photo paper or card stock, spray glue, a color printer, and scissors or an x-acto knife.

Prepping your file

First things first, you need to prepare your design for printing. Making sure that your image file is set to the right color mode will ensure that the colors on your screen match what the printer produces accurately. Printers have four colors of ink: cyan, magenta, yellow and black, when the color mode of an image is set to CMYK, that means that the computer is doing it’s best to emulate how that color will look printed.

If you’re using services like Canva, CMYK color mode isn’t an option. Don’t fret, as your printer can do the conversion itself, but just note that you will likely have to do a few test prints and color adjustments to get the exact color you want. If you’re working In Photoshop, you can change the color mode by clicking Image > Mode > CMYK Color. In Illustrator: click File > Document Color Mode > CMYK Color. In InDesign: click Window > Color, then click the dropdown button in the upper right corner and select CMYK.

The next thing you need to do to prep your file for printing is to add an additional 1/8th inch margin to the outside of your design. This is what’s known as a bleed, and will be cut off to guarantee that your design goes right up to the edge, and is perfectly square with the paper. To do this though, you also need crop marks to designate where the sides of the image are.

Once you have your image with bleed and crop marks, all you really need to do is print and cut it out. I would recommend using an x-acto blade and a ruler as a guide, but anything that can cut in the straight line should suffice. At that point, it’s just a matter of gluing it all together.