Why Business Cards?

Business Cards

Time is coming to a close on this computer arts degree, and it is time to start printing out the appropriate materials for the showcase and to create a gap of opportunity for employment.

One of those aspects, is the business card, a handy way of exposing what you are capable of within a small 89 × 51 mm piece of card. This was actually the first time I have never created a business card throughout my whole life, as back in collage we had created products and printed CVs which were showcased rather than business cards. Reflecting back on that experience, business cards are quite appropriate, for several reasons.

The following article discusses why I feel business cards are so important, not only for business but also for personal use: http://www.sessions.edu/notes-on-design/resources/design/why-business-cards-still-matter-in-the-digital-age/

Yes, it may be true that we have mobile phones and other means and methods of displaying and passing our contact information  although being able to brand yourself sufficiently counts for a great deal. People expect business cards from people who run a professional or freelance business, without them, it can insinuate that you do not take your business as seriously as other business owners.

Another key aspects of business cards are their ability to catch someones attention as well as to present your personality in a straight forward manner. Particularly for graphic designers and web designers, it opens up the playground for them to showcase their skills to the client which alone could possibly land them a job.

Why are they still being used today?

When I was in the process of creating my business card, the thought came to me, which was why are they so popular today among all the other methods of sharing your contact information and with new ways of sending business cards without manually typing in the information from a card. Methods such as 'bumping' or using QR codes don't seem to have clicked on fully as of yet.

This following articles discusses this situation:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/why-business-cards-still-beat-%E2%80%98-bump%E2%80%99

It starts to ignite some sense when you think about it, if handing over a business card takes a few seconds to accomplish, as opposed to asking if the person has the said technology or software to 'bump' or take photos into software that register the details, this would prove cumbersome to many, particularly the more traditional parties.

Developing a Business Card

Having never created a business card, although having a very strong graphic design background, I started to do my research. My supervisor Dayna suggested a very useful website called Moo.com, which was the website which really made the whole process so simple and educational.

Creating a business card is not as simple as just created a design and that is it, you also need to consider the bleed, the printing quality, file format, the text quality and of course how you as a person wishes to present yourself.

Moo.com luckily offer out templates to clients with the correct file format, which they suggest is best with the use of a vector-based PDF. Pre-flight your PDFs using the 'Adobe PDF/X-1a' pre-set. It should also be with a CMYK colour format as opposed to RBG. All of these things are essential for achieving the maximum results in printing. 
Moo.com has a great slideshow which also details bleed, safe areas and trim within printing:
http://uk.moo.com/help/faq/yay-nay.html

Find their templates and design specifics for quality print results:
http://uk.moo.com/help/faq/templates-and-guidelines.html

Designing a Business Card

Ronan Quigley an audio student who helped me develop the audio for my game wanted a business card developed, so I decided to help assist him.

Before I designed my own, I designed Ronan's card as his design request was a minimalist design approach which seemed like a good experimenting option for designing my first business card.

I used Adobe Illustrator to create both business cards as I know from experience as a designer that vector based graphics (graphics which can be freely manipulated without loss in quality) are a lot more crisp when printed.

For Ronan's audio based business card I drew around an image of headphones with the pen tool. 

The concept was that the cable of the headphones would connect to the other side displaying the cable end. A minimalist approach, although a successful project in which I gained some key skilled in creating a business card.

I used the knowledge gained from creating Ronan's card to create my own one. I personally feel that creating a business card, most people go for 'less is more'. I also feel that if everyone is going for less is more, then I feel the 'less' ends up being 'less' as it is over saturated by many others who part take in the same concept. So I decided to go for a completely different direction.

Using Illustrator again, I decided to create a quirky and creative design which represents who I am as an artist. After a lot of research on other business cards out there, I then brought in all the collected resources into illustrator for inspiration, and then mocked up my own design concept.

Finding the right font and the right colours was the most time consuming aspect. As I started to polish the design for my details side, I realised that my design ability has grown so much within the past year, not only through practice  but through admiring the interface of windows 8. the trend in graphic design at the moment seems to be in using solid colours and clear sharp text, this is evident in windows 8 and was my main inspiration for the design.

After much tweaking and adjusting, I finally created something I felt really represented my art style and ability. Something that was dynamic, colorful with attention to detail. I then spent some time customizing two pieces of my art for the back cover. 

Bellow is the final result which I am happy with and quite excited for them to arrive on the 17th May: