The Insider’s Guide to Designing Business Cards Online

If you’re not sure where you should start when designing your business cards online, then this article is a good place to start. The design of the look & feel of your business cards can either make or break you. Many times, strong business relationships start with a simple exchange of business cards. We have compiled this guide to help you make custom designed business cards online.

Business Card Shapes & Sizes

The designs for your business cards should always be well-planned & executed (luckily, GoPrint offers some awesome free business card templates for you to use!). Each element from the font size and colors of the text and your logo, should work together to entice potential customers to contact you. The first of these elements is the shape & size of your cards. Examples of sizes you should use are:

• Standard Sizes –  90 x 50 mm or 85 x 55mm

• Rounded Corners – Order rounded corners from printers who use a standard round cornering machine

User Experience – Features of Your Business Cards

Distributing your business cards is one thing, but what’s harder is getting potential customers to hold onto contact details. To leave your mark, you need to ensure that your design is creatively unique or you need to improve the usefulness of your business card.

By improving the usefulness of your business cards, we basically mean that your cards would have to serve another purpose other than just providing your contact information. This can be done by providing useful information for the recipients or make your cards memorable by letting your cards function as tools.

Below are some examples:

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Additional design elements that can be incorporated are:

QR Codes – QR codes are a form of 2D bar codes that make it easier to save contact numbers from business cards to phone and PC.QR codes are a form of 2D bar codes that make it easier to save contact numbers from business cards to phones or PCs.Many smartphones come with QR code readers. Business cards with QR codes make it easier to transfer contact information.

Generating these codes are also easy and many sites online offer it for free. Check Kerem Erkan’s QR Code Generator, SPARQCode  ;these are really helpful.

Here are 3 samples of business cards with QR codes:

<<QR Codes Examples>>

Out of the Box – If you want to be unique, you should think about fun or practical things people can use business cards for. Unique business cards are usually made out of harder materials such as plastic or metal. Here are 3 creative business cards that definitely stand out:

Printing Business Cards

There is so much to printing that new and even some professional designers have yet to learn. However, printing is such a huge topic that you’ll need a whole book just to be able to cover all the details. Here’s a checklist of things you should consider when printing business cards:

Color – The colors on your monitor may not reflect what’s on the final print. It’s because the colors are created by 2 different processes. For computer monitors, colors are created through RGB (red, green and blue). Print materials, however, are produced by adding inks and pigments, usually through CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and key color [black]).

To be able to adjust this discrepancy, you need to talk with the printing company to determine if they require files to be converted to CMYK format. There are printing companies that offer free conversion but it would be best if you use CMYK from the start.

Make sure to select  CMYK color mode when creating a new document on whatever design software you’re using.

Size – You should make sure you’re using the right size prior to designing. You must use at least 300 ppi to make sure that the images will not be pixelated during printing.

Bleed – You should remember to allot 1/8 of an inch on each side of your business card design. Otherwise, parts of your design may be cropped. You can work with the printing company to make sure this doesn’t happen. If possible, try and use design templates. These templates have guide lines you can use to make sure all the important details are within the safe zone.

Below is a sample business card template:

Fig: Sample Business Card Template for Printing

The template will help you position your design in such a way that all the important details would not be trimmed off.

Hopefully, that helps you with the basics of business card printing.We hope that you guys enjoyed this article. If there is anything that you wish to add to the information we have listed here, feel free to leave a quick message on the comments section below.