How to Format Business Cards
Business cards remain one of the most cost-effective methods of spreading the word about your business. A business card, if well designed, gives potential customers enough information about your business to let them know what you can do for them, but not so much information that the card gets tossed aside as unreadable. A properly formatted business card is essential to the overall effectiveness of the card. Learn how you can format a business card that will bring customers to you on a regular basis.
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Instructions
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Choose the desktop publishing software that's right for you. If you already have Microsoft Word, you can use the program's built-in business card templates and text and graphic editing tools to create professional, properly formatted business cards. You can also purchase software designed strictly for creating business cards or use a desktop publishing program such as the free version of Serif PagePlus (see Resources).
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Sketch the layout of your business card on paper, or open your design program and play with different ideas. You don't have to save anything until you are satisfied with the appearance of your card.
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Design for simple effectiveness. The name of your company or logo should be the center attraction. You can use a larger font for this element and either center it for a classic look or offset it for a more modern design. Open a template for a card that resembles what you are after and replace the sample text in the template with your own. Then use the text editing features of your software to change the design and color of your font. You can use a fancier font for your logo or business name, but the text font for other elements of your card should be done simple and easy to read.
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Add borders and graphics to your card sparingly. If you want to add an image, keep it very small. You only have a limited amount of space to work with on a business card, and you want to save that for information regarding your business. Stay away from borders that are thick and take up a lot of valuable space. Thin, non-intrusive line borders work better than borders formed by pictures. An image border detracts from your business card message.
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Include your services or some of your products along the bottom edge of your business card, separating each with a little black dot or some other non-distracting symbol. The font for this should be small and legible, such as Times New Roman or something similar, not cursive. At this size, cursive is hard to read, and your potential customers will not try. Write your contact information, including address, phone, fax and email, in either of the upper corners for a classic design, or in the center for a more modern look.
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