Quickie Business Card Design

Quickie Business Card Design

Quick Business Cards I’ll be meeting 4 or 5 people tomorrow, and I’m all out of business cards. So I made this one quickly, lost all my work in a weird crash, and then made it again. The picture shows the final card sitting on top of some uglier previous versions.

I’m not entirely happy with this, but my mindset of late has been to make things then deploy them to see what happens. We’ll see! I’ll make some design comments later, when I have some more time…gotta hit the sack now.

Aside: The “three dots” story comes from this post on gestalt I made a while ago. It kind of captures what I like about information graphics and graphic design in general: a small shift can make a large difference in meaning.

UPDATE:

I got sick of the cluttered nature of this design, and started reducing the number of elements. You can follow along in Part II of this series.

14 Comments

  1. Alvin 18 years ago

    Hey Dave, I like that! The colors, the typeface, and the 3 dots idea works to make a fun impact on me.

    Erm, should it be ‘these are 3 dots’ instead though?

  2. Kena 18 years ago

    I like the gestalt part a lot: I think it represents well your vision, and it forces the user to interact with the card (immediately, I had a little story run into my head, prompted by your card).

    The right-hand side seems a little busy in comparison, but I’m not quite sure how it could be improved, or even if it really needs to.

  3. Joan 18 years ago

    You came up with: This is three dots, this is a story? It was so good I thought you were quoting someone. Now I get to quote you :-)

  4. Travis Vocino 18 years ago

    Very nice David, not just a business card.  Good stuff.

  5. Deb 18 years ago

    Yes, as a sworn deputy of the Grammar Police, I have to agree that it’s, “These are three dots,” but I LOVE the card!

  6. Liz I. 18 years ago

    The left side is wonderful. It’s visually elegant and it communicates instantly, and it’s very much “you.”

    But the right side is way too cluttered and it overwhelms the left side.

    Call in your inner editor and lose everything you don’t need on the right, including the little drawings and the red carets. Let your color scheme come from “the three dots.” Drop the blue and red and stick with your greens, grays and black.

    Reconsider your use of all caps for the description of what you do. (They’re hard to read).

  7. Becky McCray 18 years ago

    Terrific design! You’ve managed to make your business cards thought provoking, and that is a trick. The hole punch makes me think of punching out one of the dots, for another layer of meaning! You probably tried and discarded that idea already.

    The fact that you have made it harmonize with this site is another bonus. Many people forget this important point.

    And don’t sweat the grammar police! You are referring to the graphic element as a (singular) whole, not the dots themselves (plural). It’s that gestalt thing!

  8. Jonathan Angliss 18 years ago

    I was reading Robert Scoble’s website last month, and he had a few hints and tips on business cards.  Here is the link:

    http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/07/05/business-card-best-practices/

    I think you have one of his tips down already… “this is a story”, makes me wonder what the story is.

    Worth a read if you’ve not done so already.

    I agree with Becky’s comment on the similar styling with the site, continuity is good.

  9. Dave Seah 18 years ago

    Thanks for the comments! Yes, I need to simplify the right side, and I really don’t like the caps…the space is SO AWKWARD and I hate center justification in general (the all-caps legibility issue would be somewhat taken care of by better justification, I think). In draft two, I’ll take everyone’s comments into account. Interesting observation on the grammar: yep, I was thinking “this is (a group of) three dots”. Perhaps it would be better to phrase it as “this is a group” and “this is a story”…I like that a lot better!

  10. Dave Seah 18 years ago

    Yeah, those red carets were ill-advised, and I knew it the moment I put them in, but I put them in anyway to see what would happen…it is a hacky fix to focus attention mostly on my name. You know the saying…when in doubt, make it red… :-)

  11. peninah 18 years ago

    brilliant! this is why you are design.. :) very though provoking and nice. one day i hope to make my cards (and entire graphic image) better than the garbage that they are. hope your boston-day went well…

  12. beth 18 years ago

    These are great and straight to the point.

  13. Joan 18 years ago

    Don’t change it to “this is a group”…it telegraphs the punchline. “This is/These are three dots” is coming from, well, you don’t know where it’s coming from. “This is a group” sets up an example.

  14. Bo Jordan 18 years ago

    Dude, the “three dots” idea would make a sweet shirt design.  Threadless, perhaps?