Business Cards

When I made business cards last year for the end of year show, I took a risk with having three different front designs with all of the text on the back; the risk being that my name wasn't on the front of the business card and it was just a design. However within the first few days of the show, the majority of the cards were gone. I was so incredibly pleased that so many people liked the designs and I wanted to continue this for this years exhibit.

This year I wanted the design to stay focused on my third year work and final major project as I personally felt that it was a nice connection with my marketing designs and artbook. I experimented with different possibilities for the front and the back design. With the front design I tried screenshots from my pilot episode and frames from my COP3 project which worked quite well but I knew it wouldn't be colourful enough for the audience to want to pick up, so I knew I had to focus more on the screenshots. I did experiment with adding in my drawn profile picture I made for LinkedIn and other social media, I thought that this would be a nice link to these elements however I personally didn't like it, I think it was the background as well as the vibrant red in my hair that put me off the design for my business card. I decided to focus on the main image of my characters that I have used across my work. When I placed the design into Illustrator, it was considerably bigger than the artboards and where the artboard outline was on the design, it only fitted Dusk's face. Even though this was coincidence, I really liked it. I tried this same close up approach with Cy's face and again it worked quite well.

Ideas on possible business card design

At first I struggled with the back design. I used the same layout as the previous business card designs that I made last year, changing the font and adding symbols next to the social media contacts. I haven't added my mobile number as I personally think that this isn't needed, the public use the internet more and are more interested with social media. I would also rather give my number out personally to people once they have given interest in my work and have contacted me through these social media. After considering the contact information, I found that the design looked boring. I wanted a small image or sketch to tie in the design. The first sketch that I imported just clicked with the work, I loved it, the contact details aligned perfectly with Cy's backpack and it made it more visually interesting. 

Here are my final business card designs:

Front Design 1

Front Design 2

Front Design 3

Back for all of the business card designs

With peer review on my designs, I gained preference to only the 1st front design as it linked with the rest of my marketing and portfolio works. I completely agree with the feedback, however I wanted variant designs alongside the 1st final business card design, so I have decided to keep all of the front designs; I would add less of the variant designs so that the main front design stands out more. Another piece of feedback was the back of the design, having two different typefaces clashed too much so I changed all of the text to one font. as well as moving the twitter link and icon as the space was quite small in comparison to the rest of the spacing. Peer review also pointed out that I didn't have a 'Who am I' line. I completely forgot about this and added this element straight away, I made sure that this 'tagline' was the same with my portfolio cover. In addition my feedback suggested making the back of the design grey-scale so that when the design is sent to printing it would be less of an expense, as some companies do not print colour on the back or will for an additional fee. 

Over all I am really pleased with my final designs and cannot wait to get them printed for the end of year show. 

Final back design