New Business Card - First Draft
JamieCalder (20 pencils) | Wed, 2007-06-27 04:03
This is my first draft of a business card for my new company. I'm a programmer, not a designer. I looked at some of the other submissions I've seen here, read the critiques, and tried to come up with something simple, yet attractive.
I've done two versions, a vertical card and a horizontal card. Any blurriness is a result of the conversion to jpeg, the originals look much clearer. Plus, the dimensions are wider and taller by 1/8" as I added a 1/16" bleed area to the perimeter of the card.
Any and all feedback is appreciated. Yes, even negati..., er I mean, constructive feedback. :)
Thanks.
J.
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I think the overall look of this card is good. It's modern-looking but also a little retro (because of the typewritery font), which seems appropriate for your line of work. I think you might want to play with the position of the text at the top. Maybe a little lower and to the left, to justify with the left edge of glebemedia?
What stock do you have in mind for this? Gloss, matte? Any varnish (dull or not)?
The standard bleed is 1/8 inch, or 9 points, by the way.
Mara
Your colors choice is good. Try some different fonts for address at bottom.
anthony
Indian.
90% creative yet.
It's a simple design, with few colors. Maybe the address it's to small to read.
http://www.businesscardsexpress.net
nice design. i would loose the big letters in the bg.
Mara06 - You're right, I had allowed for a 1/8 inch bleed, not 1/16th. I moved the name, number and email text to the left align with the 'g' in glebemedia, and it does look much better. Thank you.
Rush2Anthony, Franky - Yes, once I printed them out, I see that the font is a little hard to read. I upped the font size on the address area, and a few other elements, and it is much better. Thanks for your feedback.
Zagadka - I tried it without the large bg letters, and I find I like the design better with them in there. Thanks for your feedback, though. I appreciate it.
Overall it's a solid design but I find 'grebemedia' hoovering a hair over the orange bar a bit distracting. I'm also not a big fan of using the typewriter font for the smaller text and would try setting a clean sans serif to accent the name of the company and individual.
In addition, the ghosted 'gm' is somewhat confusing on the vertical layout because 'Jamie Calder' [JC] appears over it which causes a visually disconnect with the company name at the bottom. I'd try a few different layouts to better connect the background ghosted letters with the company name and not the individual.
Another inexpensive way to add interest and set yourself apart from 95% of all business cards would be to round the top right corner. It is also a subtle visual repeat of the arc on the curly part of the 'g'. [Talk with your printer about standard round overs they use and options]
P.S. - Make sure to trap the bottom of the 'g' if you decide to leave it over the orange bar. Black by default 'overprints' and you'll end up with a slight difference in ink density. [Top of letter would be 100% K while the bottom would be 100% K and 100% PMS 032]
I had planned to round one or more of the corners, but forgot all about it. You are gith about the top-right corner, I think that's the way I'll go.
I like the 'gm', so I think I'll stick with them.
Thanks for the info on the 'g' at the bottom, I'll look in to that. There's so much to think about besides just the design that I never would have thought of. Luckily, one of my business partners is a designer and does a lot of print work, I'll be bugging him for advice next.
First of all, great design. It's clean and simple, and I don't think that the ghosted letters look bad at all. I quite like them, actually.
The only thing I found distracting is the same as Creative_NRG's response above. The name of the company has kind of awkward spacing with the orange bar at the bottom.
The "g" in the name will overprint, and you might want to try making it 99% K instead of 100% K to resolve this, at least that has helped me in the past.
Great design, and I prefer the design of the vertical card. :)
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Perfectly Lost Designs
Yes, I prefer he vertical version as well.
And I will be keeping the ghosted letters, I like them too.
I'll look into this "overprinting" and "knocking out" stuff. One of my business partners is a designer and knows more about print work than I do,
The business about the overprinting. What I do is use a build of c100m100y100 99k (or sometimes even zero K) for any black I don't want overprinting, then assign 100K to overprint everything. It's nice and crisp, and I like the richness of the build.
I hope you'll keep the big screened letters in the background. It emphasizes the typewriter thing, which I think is good for you. It's possible, though that on the address side of the card, the "g" could go a little lighter, to match the strength of the orange "m." And do you want the "g" on the other side to be a gray-orange blend? I wonder if it would have more freshness is the gray knocked out.
I'm still curious about your stock choices.
Mara
I'm not sure what I'm going to use yet. I haven't thought about it (and don't know much about it, either). Any suggestions?
I'll play around with the letters. I hadn't noticed the difference in the letters until you mentioned it, thanks.
I guess I think of your large "gm" as a watermark, very subtle. You may have a totally different idea in mind, of course.
As to papers, you could go to any good commercial printer with this as a two-color job with screens and opt for uncoated stock -- could be a tiny bit textured (oh, the pressman will *lurve* that!) or something like Expression in Strathmore's Beckett line, assuming they still have it -- the 130# (duplex) weight would be awesome for your two-sided job. Expression is a really good white-white, and it "pets" nicely, if you know what I mean. Sweet finish. The heavier stocks can be a special order deal, though, like you have to order whole pallet, and most printers won't do that unless you plan to use it all up. I've gotten lucky though. never hurts to check into it. Sometimes you can get small quantities of the good stuff from distributors' reps.
You could also treat this as a 4/4 job -- we've been talking about playing with builds to get around overprinting issues, so this might well be the way to go. Could be cheaper, too. If you went this way, I'd recommend a premium (#1) matte coated stock with a dull varnish on both sides to make it really elegant and to protect against fingerprints. You'll probably be stuck with whatever the house stock is. Again, the heavier the weight the better. You might be limited to 12pt stuff, though. If they tried to sell you a #2-rated white, that wouldn't be so awful, given your warm colors. (Just compensate for the extra yellow in your builds.)
If this were my card, probably I'd go two-color on the Strathmore. If you go DI rather than with a more "traditional" printer who wants to run film for screens, be sure they're up to stochastic screening to avoid that awful grainy look that DI presses can produce.
Man, I'm just full of (ahem) advice lately. I hate when I do that.
Mara
I want to add, I love that you keep consistency in the color scheme and the fonts in both your business cards and your website. It makes it extremely memorable. :)
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Perfectly Lost Designs
:)
I just took the back of the business card, moved the 'gm' over a bit and threw that up so I had something that matched for now. The completely orange background may be a bit too much, but it'll do for now.
I love it, as is, it's different, and it's fresh. Love the colors, the simplicity of the design, the layout, the approach. i just find this really well done.
nice job!
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Architectural Technician - Multimedia Designer
www.ArchMedia.us