Biz Cards

[RUSHVision]

Hahahahaaaaaa...like that one, did you?

Happy to give you my thoughts, dude. And don't worry, I won't be offended if you decide not to incorporate any of my ideas. I'm just handing out my perceptions, what you want to do with them is completely up to you.

[chrismitchell]

nicely put rush

Christopher Mitchell

[onine]

Hey Lefty, I have an opinion for what it's worth - feel free to ignore!

Well, over here in the uk we very rarely have "principals" or "presidents" in any kind of authority so the words obviously will have slighty different overtones in your neck of the woods, however, it does wrankle a little when people give themselves "big" titles when lesser (and more apropriate) ones will do - ask yourself, when you start operating as a freelance designer, will you spend most of your time managing the company? If the answer is "no" then I would suggest going for something like "Brian Laabatts, Lead Designer" or something along those lines. You are a one-man-show so you have you fingers in every pie; head of marketing, general manager, chief finance officer, recruitment officer... the list goes on. Certainly, over here "lead designer" would be more appropriate but of course I appreciate that there are different customs/practices in the states.

I have to agree with Nats about the fonts - i think that there are still too many. Soooo much can be acheived with just one type family - you could use a combination like this for example:

Lefteye
- Egyptienne Black (say... 50pt)

Designs
- Egyptienne Bold (50pt)

Websites • Brochures • Logos
- Egyptienne Roman (14pt)

Brian Laabatts
- Egyptienne Bold (right aligned) (20pt)

Senior Designer
- Egyptienne Roman (right aligned) (20pt)

tel: 555-555-555 • fax: 555-555-555 • email: ...
- Egyptienne Italic (14pt)

added to this you can set these in a variety of point sizes and colours - just imagine the possibilities with two complementary fonts families! Endless possibilities. 3, 4 or 5 fonts is just greedy and maybe a little incoherent. Anyway, enough negative, I really like your logo too - lol and the fk colour scheme

Oh yeah one more thing (sorry!) - for the sake of looking professional, I'd also shelve the gmail address and shift to ... or info@ or sales@ or some such thing. Anyway, sorry again for the negatives - i hope i dont offend

[onine]

I read my post again and I think i have something to add about the title issue. Someone in this thread said that principal/president was more professional than owner - which i agree with but I still don't think it's best. The fact is that people don't want to sit down and hammer out design issues with "presidents" they want to do it with "designers", hopefully, designing is what you'll be doing most of so be honest and say what you are! Its the best job in the company anyway!

[lefteyewilly]

thanks for the comments, i'm already in the process of scaling down the font choices.


Well, i'm definitely not going to use brian[at} lefteyedesign {dot} net, now that you've posted it for all the spammers to get

But, yeah i agree with the Gmail thing. i do have the domain secured, so once the site is up and running i'm fine, but i don't want to pay for email at this point in the game when gmail is doing just fine...I think i'm going to have to go the gerbs route and start and ebeggin endevour

[onine]

whoops!

email removed :0

[lefteyewilly]

hehe, no problems

[lefteyewilly]

Aight,
3rd version...new color scheme and all. I'm going to keep the back of my card with the logo on it just like my last post. Crits welcome again

[RUSHVision]

Alright, you may begin hating me now...no, wait a second...ok, now!

First let me say that the way I see it, things are basically good. I think most of your pieces are in place, but now it is my opinion that with a little tweaking you'll have something that will more accurately represent you and effectively speak on behalf of you and your business in your absence.

I know I suggested a more techno font, so that's why you're going to hate me, but I was thinking something more along the lines of a thinner techy or code-like type of thing. And that was when I was thinking of pushing the super hero/agent of design angle.

The thing about that font in particular that I believe is detracting from the overall presentation is the general heaviness of it. That's Denmark, isn't it? If there was a lighter version I might suggest trying that instead, but barring that, I'm going to go back to recommending a clean sans-serif font. I know you're probably sick of messing the fonts by now, aren't you?

The first thing I would do personally is to set up some guides that align to the topmost and leftmost boundaries of the rounded yellow square on the left then two more the same distance away from the other two edges of the card. Then I would move all the other elements in so that nothing fell outside these boundaries. Things are looking a bit tight on the edges right now and the continuance also will provide a greater balance to the overall design.

I believe it would be a good idea to tone down the impact of the info text because I think your 'visual weight' ratio is a bit off. You should set up a 'visual prominence chain' where each of your separate elements...logo, company name, the '.net' part, your name, your services, and the address/phone info (I believe they should be in that order)...all convey a different amount of visual importance so as not to conflict with one another and the eye is led to information by way of how much attention each element silently demands. If everything is demanding your attention at the same time it just becomes an assault of visual noise.

One thing I would do to prioritize the visual elements would be to only use pure white on the logo head and on the word 'LEFT'. If you take all the other text that is currently white and change it to a light grey...doesn't need to go far...then those elements will drop back slightly and give more visual weight to the logo and the name of your company.

So there ya go, just some more nit-picking.

[chrismitchell]

Just my 2 cents... but i don't like cards that have a full colour background... I much prefer to use a clean white card. Thats just me... I'll shut up and go sit in the corner with my orange juice now... *sip*

[JWin]

don't like cards that have a full colour background.

nah, when you get that slick glossy finish and it really sharpens the colors, that is the shizznit. Also, everyone has white biz cards so when you throw somethin a little different at potential clients they respond well to it.

[chrismitchell]

fair enuff point, I still think that the full colour ones look cack.. I'm just going from some of the largest and greatest (imho) Graphic Design firms and they go for the simple understated look... not the in your face look... but again thats just my 2cents... i'll go back to sipping my orange juice now... *sip*

Christopher Mitchell