Creating a new Business Card

This week I had to create a new Business card for my company, ZEE. I have to say, this sort of work, like creating a business cards, is not as easy as some people think. Actually it’s pretty hard to condense our business to a size of a business card.

"The business card... is kind of an extension of yourself. It's a little bit of giving yourself to someone else."
— Ken Erdman, founder of the Business Card Museum, Erenheim, PA

Looking for some ideas

We started looking for some references and we found good sites like:

Creating the card

With some references in mind we had the idea of using a tag cloud showing what we do and the technologies we work with. So one side would be white with our logo and addresses, while the other side in blue with the tag cloud in white.

The final result:

Front Side:

Front side

Back:

Back side

3d Test

About author

User picture

My name is Fabio Sasso, I'm a graphic/web designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil and I'm the founder of Abduzeedo. I hope we can share lots of information, tips, and ideas through abduzeedo.

This author is brought to you by:

Nice design but try coated on front and flat with room to take notes on the back ... another reason for people to hang on to the card.

josh's picture
josh (not verified) 07/01/2008

well the desings are nice
but you could have done better
the simplicity is good

owen clivet's picture
owen clivet (not verified) 06/24/2008

I like your work. I see that this blog is doing very will in popularity from your rankings and diggs. You must do well with your business! Could you offer some web promotion tips? Do you use organic search engine optimization?

Small Business Web Hosting Services's picture
Small Business Web Hosting Services (not verified) 05/08/2008

i always having problemes with creating cards

computer jobs (not verified) 03/16/2008

The business card idea is neat. I like it.

dual action cleanse

Ralph's picture
Ralph (not verified) 03/15/2008

The minimal design is nice.

helicopter pilot 's picture
helicopter pilot (not verified) 03/15/2008

Nice tutorial. Really once you get an idea for a business card and you know what you want, designing it is the easy part. Then you just gotta choose the right paper style.

Denver Web Design's picture
Denver Web Design (not verified) 03/14/2008

If you want to get cool cards like these, visit my site.
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David U.'s picture
David U. (not verified) 03/11/2008

Very interesting read. I am also looking to make some business cards for my business that sells shopping cart software.

Shopping Cart Software's picture
Shopping Cart Software (not verified) 03/05/2008

Hey I love the idea of using tag clouds for the specialties! Nice one, it's one of those "why haven't I thought of this first??" moments when I saw that one hehehe

Business Cards's picture
Business Cards (not verified) 03/05/2008

hey nice and cool design
i like it because the colour selection is soothing
nice work

earn money online's picture
earn money online (not verified) 03/02/2008

hey thanks for sharing
very well written:)

penny stocks list's picture
penny stocks list (not verified) 02/25/2008

Hello,

Thanks for this article. It is very useful especially the name card resource links.

Thanks!

eblogger's picture
eblogger (not verified) 02/24/2008

I'm trying to get some new business cards made myself. What kind of card stock did you use?

Baldwin's picture
Baldwin (not verified) 02/19/2008

Hmm..The name of the company is kind of hard to read. But I do like the tag cloud on the back, very web 2.0. I liked the links of the business card designs too. Great reference.

Yicrosoft Directory's picture
Yicrosoft Directory (not verified) 02/18/2008

Dear Admin! It seems to me, today is time for clearing yours blog of useless comments and a spam.

Anonymous (not verified) 02/14/2008

I like it. I love the tag cloud on the back. Colors are good too.

David's picture
David (not verified) 02/13/2008

Awesome Business card. I think the key part is planning out what you actually want on there. There are tons of things that you can put but only a few things you should. I personally thought about making a business card as making a website.

Cameron Fligh's picture
Cameron Fligh (not verified) 02/12/2008

Excellent tag-cloud, looks very clean.
:)

MD's picture
MD (not verified) 02/01/2008

Hey, the tag cloud design rocks! Roughly how much time did you have to spend in the design?

peoplesearch's picture
peoplesearch (not verified) 01/22/2008

what a great concept! The tag cloud on the back of the card is such a clever way of summarizing your skills. Very aesthetically pleasing as well.

When i first saw it I got that "great idea!" buzz, followed by the "why didn't I think of that" slump.

Well done

www.turnoffthe.tv

turnoffthe.tv (not verified) 01/11/2008

heheh so nice, and it's so simple it's attractive.

Yes it's hard to make a business card about you/your company and putting your experiences/skills in 2.5 x 5 ( or smaller? I keep forgetting the size of that thing) but I heard one company made a small booklet as their 'business card' lol

closa's picture
closa (not verified) 10/09/2007

Hey, cool design. Can u share a soft copy of this with me? Plz email me :)

Anonymous's picture
Anonymous (not verified) 09/12/2007
ahmed's picture
ahmed (not verified) 08/28/2007

back for notes....how about no

Anonymous (not verified) 06/18/2007

I like the idea of the tag cloud, but also agree with what others have said, that the back of the card should be reserved for notes... Perhaps if the tag cloud were set to 60% translucent (or whatever lends itself to be readable, yet non-distracting when written over with a black pen).

- www.JoeLevi.com

Joe Levi's picture
Joe Levi (not verified) 05/29/2007

Arrasow

Fabiow (not verified) 05/29/2007

Tag Cloud on business card sure looks good!

Aki's picture
Aki (not verified) 05/29/2007

Loves the front logo, and the idea of a tag cloud on the card is cool. Looks great overall.

Marti (not verified) 05/28/2007

They use that font on the front at on the web site betterdesigngroup.com

Better Design (not verified) 05/28/2007

Thanks for all comments.... the font used is helvetica neue light, and the logo uses a custom typeface check this out http://www.abduzeedo.com/node/86..

abduzeedo's picture
abduzeedo 05/27/2007

Great design!

What font did you use?

Luco's picture
Luco (not verified) 05/27/2007

FYI ... one should always leave the back of a card blank as it allows for taking quick notes about the individual etc.

soop's picture
soop (not verified) 05/27/2007

The tag cloud is cool. The customers you match up with know what it is or should know what it is. Either way, they've just learned something.

Anonymous (not verified) 05/27/2007

Be sure to use a good and interesting card stock; that separates the pros from the fly-by-night sorts.

Anonymous (not verified) 05/27/2007

I like the front, but I think that the back of a business card should be more or less blank. I like to write on the back of them.

Anonymous (not verified) 05/27/2007

To those who haven't done cursive writing since second grade, the logo looks like a stylized cursive z and the slanting crossbars on the e carries the same handwritten impression. The name is reproduced in bold print in the wordplay on "irresistible"!

Great design. Wish my company had a logo half as cool.

Anonymous's picture
Anonymous (not verified) 05/27/2007

I like turtles and gophers.

Anonymous (not verified) 05/27/2007

I really like the tag cloud. that's cool

Carl5k's picture
Carl5k (not verified) 05/27/2007

Espero que não tenha mandado o seu cartão.
Tá faltando um W no endereço do seu site (parte da frente).

Philippe's picture
Philippe (not verified) 05/26/2007

I really like your business card. I'm going to steal the logo idea. Maybe even steal the code for this site as well.

Knickers Down (not verified) 05/26/2007

Yeah dude nice. Love that logo too. Good stuff.
Ummm whilst I'm dishing out compliments i really like this webpage as well...

Chadwick's picture
Chadwick (not verified) 05/26/2007

Great design. I would certainly give you a call if i ever had your card in my hand.
But like i always say. If you have an ass, you got an opinion. So if you like it. Thats all that is important. Don expect constructive criticism. Its a good job done great ;)

Anonymous's picture
Anonymous (not verified) 05/26/2007

Very imaginative, and creative. Thank you for sharing this.

Travel Photographer's picture
Travel Photographer (not verified) 05/26/2007

I like it. Geez, people just love to knock things don't they?

If you gave that card to me, I'd be able to understand what it means and probably recall who it was for if I want to contact you. Beyond that, what's a business card for?

andrew's picture
andrew (not verified) 05/26/2007

I find that a lot of what I use my business cards for is writing something down on the back and handing it to someone. If yours is hard to see pencil on, you might regret this design.

Anonymous (not verified) 05/26/2007

He pulled the tag cloud off of another business card. It's still a good idea though and one worth copying.

Anonymous (not verified) 05/26/2007

Thanks for the comments... the web design without a space and the "w" missing were fixed.

abduzeedo's picture
abduzeedo 05/26/2007

Did you intend for "web design" to appear without a space? It looks accidental to me.

Anonymous (not verified) 05/26/2007

@ first poster: how do you know who his clients are? But more importantly: it _does_ convey a message to laymen coz words like 'usabilidade' and 'identidade visual' are included, and I am guessing HTML and CSS are terms that are known to most people who need to get a web site designed, so no problems there either.

Overalll, the card conveys a sense of technology and design working hand-in-hand for a good user expierence, so that's a great message.

Excellent design!

And @first and second poster: about the logo: there are several ways that the letter 'Z' is handwritten around the world. One way is with a little circle at the bottom, just like in this logo design. I am guessing this is current in Brazil, so to a Brazilian audience this logo should be perfectly readable.

Try to step out of your own perspective guys, you are not the intended audience in this case.

Anonymous (not verified) 05/26/2007

sorry but that card looks completely spastic

hire a design agency - you obviously have no clue

Anonymous (not verified) 05/26/2007

sorry but that card looks completely spastic

hire a design agency - you obviously have no clue

Anonymous (not verified) 05/26/2007

@ first poster: how do you know who his clients are? And secondly: it does convey a message to laymen coz words like 'usabilidade' and 'identidade visual' are included.
Great work!

Anonymous (not verified) 05/26/2007

this is a BAD layout.

a) your company logo in unreadable
b) the tag cloud is something that your geek pussy will scream for, but all of your clients will think "uhm, what is this shit"?

Anonymous (not verified) 05/26/2007

I don't know if your company logo is the same as the one on the front of the card. If its not, i would suggest to change it to something more readable...someone that can't read the name correctly is more enclined to just throw it out instead of figuring out the writing.

My 2 cents ;) ITS great though!

Anonymous's picture
Anonymous (not verified) 05/26/2007

Check your website address. You are missing a "w".

Chris (not verified) 05/26/2007

Nice work! It makes a great impression!

Blue Haven Pools's picture
Blue Haven Pools (not verified) 05/26/2007

The card looks great, clean and creative web 2.0 kind of way.

Wayne's picture
Wayne (not verified) 05/26/2007

Nailed it. Wasn't expecting the tag cloud. Very clever.

Ryan Nalepinski's picture
Ryan Nalepinski (not verified) 05/25/2007

The message of the back it's just amazing. You translate a web thing in a paper meaning. So I love the logo and the design overall. A perfect score.

Jaime's picture
Jaime (not verified) 05/25/2007

Great design.

Bruno Lorenz's picture
Bruno Lorenz (not verified) 05/25/2007

Like it!!

Diogo Oliveira's picture
Diogo Oliveira (not verified) 05/25/2007

Nice business card, but the back is a little bit too much "Web2.0" ;o)

Webstandard-Team's picture
Webstandard-Team (not verified) 05/25/2007

Creating a business card is one of the most difficult exercise, partly because of its small format.

I like yours, well done!

Maxime.

Maxime Guilbot's picture
Maxime Guilbot (not verified) 05/25/2007

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