Getting out there and meeting people is a very important part of getting work into your business. There are plenty of networking opportunities every week full of potential clients and associates. You’re comfortable introducing your business and engaging with others in the room, but how do you make sure people remember you amongst all the other people they’ve just met? A great business card is the perfect way to stand out from all the average business cards people will have received and stick in their mind.
So what information do you put on a business card?
Although they follow similar lines, the answer is slightly different for everyone depending on their business, brand and position within their business. An individual freelancer, for instance, will likely want as many ways to engage as possible from basic contact details like phone, email etc to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter profile addresses. A managing director of a large company may not feel the necessity to include so much information.
Brand recognition
When you hand people your business card, it will often be the first time they are exposed to your brand. It’s therefore important that the business card design is kept as simple and on-brand as possible. This way, as long as your brand is well designed in the first place, it will be noticed and the recipient will start to associate it with you and your business.
Conversation starters
A well designed business card can make a great conversation piece. If your budget allows, there are many options to make your business cards a little different from everyone else’s – Unorthodox shapes, embossing, foiling are all techniques to make your card stand out.
For the F8 business cards, we wanted something simple but interesting. The cards are created using a method known as duplexing; doubling card up to increase the overall thickness and allow you to have more than one colour of card in the design. Our cards are duplexed with GF Smith bitter chocolate and nubuck brown card, giving us 2 colours and a satisfyingly thick 700gsm card overall. When we hand them over, people are usually surprised by their weight and thickness which is itself a great conversation starter.
The backs of our business cards have details on as usual, with a letterpress deboss effect to the print. The F8 logo is very subtly stamped into the front of the card without ink so it just catches the light. This technique is known as blind embossing or debossing and allows for an understated yet interesting effect. When letterpress was the only option, printers would carefully get the weighting of the press just right to ‘kiss’ the paper with ink without an unsightly indentation on the page. Nowadays, this indent is purposefully created in debossing for a trendy hand-crafted look.
To see some more examples of business cards we’ve created for our clients click here to view our portfolio.
If you would like to talk to us about our brand design and business stationery services get in touch.
