This week we talked about composition and the assignment is to create your own business card.
After doing some research online, I feel the actual task is beyond just the card itself. Business card is only one element of the whole package, it has to go with logo, brand/product/company identity, packaging, and everything else you want to leave with your audience.
When it come to design, everyone knows simplicity is always better, but not everyone is doing it. Nowadays, you can find all kinds of fancy business card out there, even though I am highly interested in visual design and all kinds of visual communications, the one simple thing always stick out to me is, a gesture and invitation for listening. Let me explain. When I go to a professional office, like a doctor’s or attorney’s office, certainly I don’t expect to see shining complicated combination of logo and fonts on the card, but after seeing all sorts card design that is almost literally shouting in your face: Remember me! Call me! Don’t throw me away! I now appreciate even more a simple elegant card that provides ample space for me to write down points of the meeting, the person I just met, and things like date, time, stuff to prepare for next appointment…. and so on.
Nancy shared her card in class, you would expect someone who is in the visual business that her card is one of those complicated ones, but it is the opposite. Although the syllabus provide some good examples, I searched away anyways, and here are some impressive ones.
Plastic business card. They are the ones you would hesitate before tossing out because they are different. I think if I don’t remember the name, at least I will be able to recall the type of business s/he is in even if I lost the card.
Wooden cards, creative and durable.
But… bummer, those are also the ones you can’t write things down. Well, nothing is perfect I guess.
Vertical cards…. who says horizontal is the only way to go?
And those that they are so special but leave no room. For someone as clumsy as I am, I would tear this one up accidentally as soon as I leave the office.
I definitely love the thickness, the texture, the shape, and engraved fonts, but this one looks too much like a beverage coaster. Maybe a good design for a restaurant owner or someone who works in casino, but not for a recruitment consulting company.
The definition of good or bad composition design also depends on the business you are in. So I am going to start something simple and I can add things like logos or business identity items later on.
Front — as you can see, although not completely comply with the one third rule, still, I carefully try to stay out of the way. The space on the right is for holding fingers, and reserved for client to write, to draw, to do yoga or whatever they want. Plus, I will make the all the fonts engraved. This time, the font I choose to use is (Sans-serif) Copperplate, name in regular, the rest in light. I love how the each stroke has small glyph serif to emphasize the terminus of vertical and horizontal strokes. The kerning between each letter is almost well balanced, and the result goes with the whole card– clean and crisp.
Back — I reveal what I do in essence, which is connecting dots. My specialty in SEO is providing a platform and a tool box for client to carry out ideas, create contents, and optimize site ranking. I am only responsible for making a car, but where the car goes is up to clients. (I honestly don’t know which one is better to put on the back: a tagline or a logo. As the logo part is still work in progress, I will put tag line here for now.)
