Self Promotional Material: business cards
So far for my self promotional package I have a website, fully paid for and updated with my most recent work and an Instagram page which is regularly visited and updated. For the current brief it is asking for printed and digital material. I need to create business cards for myself as part of the brief requirement, but also for the exhibition and for the future once I leave university and want to do it as a career.
What does a business card need to include?
I have mentioned above about a showcase of images, which is optional. I personally would like to include some of my best images on these cards to give people a feel for the type of work I do. I also don't have a logo so to fill the space on the cards I believe an image would do the job.
Choosing where I design and buy my business cards from, I have previously used Vistaprint for personalised calendars and the quality has always been really good. A friend has made business cards using Vistaprint and the quality of them are good too. The pricing is reasonable and especially as I want a couple of 100 it's not going to cost anything I can't afford. Also the templates look professional and simple. I don't want nothing too fancy or unique to reflect someone I'm not. So to go with something simple and show some of my work would be best for me.
I have also been looking at MOO as a few mentioned it during the planning for the exhibition. However going by the price I am better off with Vistaprint. They've currently got an offer on, 250 business cards for £11.99, and I can get a card holder for just under £5. I would be paying that price for just 50 business cards with MOO, therefore I will see what designs Vistaprint have to offer and if I'm happy with the final design will most probably go with them.
I wanted to place an image on the other side of the card which was an additional £9, ending up at £21 for 250 cards which I am happy to pay. However the only issue I faced was having no variation of images on the cards. As I will be using my best image I don't mind but if I can I would rather have variation. So now that I've discovered that Vistaprint don't do more than one version I will save the current design and look further.
After speaking with friends they recommended I try www.printed.com because it is still affordable and I am able to choose from a variety of paper and create more versions of it. Fortunately one of them had samples of the types of paper they do, so I met up with her to take a look. There was 3 that were appropriate for the images I was placing on the other side and weren't too expensive. The more fine art paper which I liked was looking at £40 just for one version, however I really liked the recycled paper which came to £20 for 2 versions. I figured if I was going to put images on the back it would be worth having more than one on the back, and I couldn't afford 3 versions. The texture of the recycled could work with my images and the off-white colour would be more suitable as a frame for my image rather than white.
Putting together the business cards I preferred the design from Vistaprint, so I put in all my details and copied the screenshot into Photoshop to then be placed onto the template. I also had to change the dimensions of the images otherwise they would have been cropped too much. It took a few more attempts than I imagined to get it how I wanted but I managed it in the end coming to £25.21 for 200 business cards of 2 versions. I can't wait to receive them and see how they turned out!
The business cards arrived today and I'm pretty pleased with the outcome. The choice of paper was good and mostly picked due to what I could afford. However I do think the paper type which had more texture could have looked nicer with my images. They're clean, modern and simple but that I believe that looks more professional.
What does a business card need to include?
- full name
- mobile number
- address of business (if necessary)
- email address
- online content (Facebook, Instagram, website)
- logo (if you have one)
- a showcase of images, optional
I have mentioned above about a showcase of images, which is optional. I personally would like to include some of my best images on these cards to give people a feel for the type of work I do. I also don't have a logo so to fill the space on the cards I believe an image would do the job.
Choosing where I design and buy my business cards from, I have previously used Vistaprint for personalised calendars and the quality has always been really good. A friend has made business cards using Vistaprint and the quality of them are good too. The pricing is reasonable and especially as I want a couple of 100 it's not going to cost anything I can't afford. Also the templates look professional and simple. I don't want nothing too fancy or unique to reflect someone I'm not. So to go with something simple and show some of my work would be best for me.
I have also been looking at MOO as a few mentioned it during the planning for the exhibition. However going by the price I am better off with Vistaprint. They've currently got an offer on, 250 business cards for £11.99, and I can get a card holder for just under £5. I would be paying that price for just 50 business cards with MOO, therefore I will see what designs Vistaprint have to offer and if I'm happy with the final design will most probably go with them.
After speaking with friends they recommended I try www.printed.com because it is still affordable and I am able to choose from a variety of paper and create more versions of it. Fortunately one of them had samples of the types of paper they do, so I met up with her to take a look. There was 3 that were appropriate for the images I was placing on the other side and weren't too expensive. The more fine art paper which I liked was looking at £40 just for one version, however I really liked the recycled paper which came to £20 for 2 versions. I figured if I was going to put images on the back it would be worth having more than one on the back, and I couldn't afford 3 versions. The texture of the recycled could work with my images and the off-white colour would be more suitable as a frame for my image rather than white.
Putting together the business cards I preferred the design from Vistaprint, so I put in all my details and copied the screenshot into Photoshop to then be placed onto the template. I also had to change the dimensions of the images otherwise they would have been cropped too much. It took a few more attempts than I imagined to get it how I wanted but I managed it in the end coming to £25.21 for 200 business cards of 2 versions. I can't wait to receive them and see how they turned out!
The business cards arrived today and I'm pretty pleased with the outcome. The choice of paper was good and mostly picked due to what I could afford. However I do think the paper type which had more texture could have looked nicer with my images. They're clean, modern and simple but that I believe that looks more professional.
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