Promotion - Business cards

 The time to get some business cards is well overdue. I have been concentrating on coursework and other aspects of promotion and I wanted my cards to reflect me at the end of my degree. 

I looked through my extensive business card collection as research:

The little mini cards (70x28mm) are neat but seem a bit apologetic and would easily get lost. Postcards allow space for a reasonable sized image but can cause confusion to passers by, are they free or for sale? Square cards do stand out but maybe for the wrong reasons, they seem a bit gimicky and might distract from the image content. Also they don’t fit into a standard card holder. I might be a bit old fashioned but when I ran a business we had plastic sleeves which held cards for our contacts so I think that shape matters. I’m not convinced by rounded edges, I don’t think that the impact is worth the extra cost and wastage. It’s important to me to have them printed on recycled card, but lots of printers do that. 

What should it say? Obviously my name, website and social media links. It will need an email address but does my hotmail account give the wrong impression? A very quick survey of other illustrators shows a mixture of contact forms, personal domains and gmail accounts (but no hotmail) I already have too many email accounts but I can see the value in having a separate business account. Private domains are expensive for a startup on limited hours and I could easily spend more than I make so for the moment I’m going for a dedicated gmail account, I can always upgrade in the future. 

What about phone numbers? A card will be collected by a physical person but I’m reluctant to give out my phone number, it’s difficult for me to speak on the phone when I’m at my day job and the reception is terrible. I think that I’ll leave the phone number out, I can always write it on if I leave enough space. 

I worked through my illustrations to look for ideas. Some of the best examples in my collection are quite random images but I don’t know if I’m that bold, and sometimes random images just don’t work. Like a portfolio the image should promote what I do well. Using Photoshop I made a frame with card sized holes and inserted anything that looked like it might work.

Of these I think that, despite my earlier reservations, this image would make a good postcard. It could be used as a giveaway and might be kept as an aide memoir rather than just being thrown away. 

 

For traditional cards I think that my preferred images are:

This shows a graphic, narrative design. It’s an action shot (drawn from memory/imagination) and shows use of mixed media, which is central to my practice. 

This is another clear, bold drawing. It demonstrates both my drawing skills and my ability to depict character with line. 

And this represents the veterinary/educational side of my work in a smaller format - maybe without background colour?

I don't think that plain its eye-catching enough.

I made this for a birthday card and I liked it so much I decided to make it into a fourth business card design. Moo will make cards with multiple different designs and it would help to have a small range of designs to represent the different strands of my practice.  

These are the cards that arrived.