Anatomy Of A Business Card

June 4th, 2012 | 6,182 views | 3 Comments »
Posted in Web Marketing | Tagged Print Design

We’ve designed hundreds of business cards in the last decade. We’ve seen great ones, and we’ve seen some really sad looking cards along the way. We’ve even heard some say that nobody uses business cards anymore. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. Business cards are still an essential staple in any business, and there is still no better way to provide a prospect with your information than leaving behind a business card.

Content to include on your business card

The question we get asked most often by our clients, is exactly what content should they include on their business card. We’ve put together a list of some of the most common elements for business cards.

1. Company Logo
2. Company Tagline
3. Your Name
4. Your Title
5. Phone and Fax
6. Email Address
7. Website Address
8. Mailing Address
9. Social Media Links

Using our business card as an example, you will find the majority of the elements from the list above on our card. We do not include our mailing address since we do not have a physical office for our clients. We also have left off a fax number since nobody really sends us any faxes.

Notice that you don’t find two separate lines for email address and website. Instead, we have highlighted our website address in red on the same line as our email address. Since it is expected that you have an email address that also ends in your domain name, having both lines is no longer necessary. You can call out the domain by bolding the text, setting it off in another color, or just leaving it as the other text.

Another thing we see often is people putting Facebook and/or Twitter icons on their cards, but not actually providing addresses where they can be found on those social media sites. Facebook and Twitter are still a mystery to some, and not everyone is successful at “searching” for a company on those sites. Why leave it to chance? Simply include your Facebook and/or Twitter (or any other network) url right on your cards.

Quick Note: Some Facebook urls are very long. If you find yourself needing to shorten those, you can replace ‘facebook.com’ with ‘fb.me’. For example — facebook.com/onelilyinc and fb.me/onelilyinc both go to the same place, automatically.

One More Quick Note: If your Facebook url has a long string of digits at the end, this means you have not yet gotten your vanity url from Facebook. This is quick and easy, and will allow you to set a much shorter url for Facebook. More info here.

Single Sided or Double Sided?

Another common question is whether or not you should print on just one side of your card or both. Well, that’s really a question on personal preference and budget. In the past, printing 2 sided cards was extremely expensive, but with the number of digital printers out there, you can usually get 2 sided cards printed for only 10-15% more than the cost of a single sided card.

Cramming too much on one side of a card can make the card difficult to read, and is often an eyesore. Splitting your content between the two sides will help give your card whitespace and better balance.

Need a little inspiration? Check out some of these business card galleries.

Card Gala
Card Observer
Card View