How to Make Your Metal Business Card Stand Out
Despite the increasing digitalization of various business aspects, business cards have been able to maintain their importance. And the emergence of metal business cards has become a game-changer for businesses. With these unique pocket-sized billboards, they can take marketing, advertising, and branding efforts to the next level. When it comes to designing metal business cards, many businesses do it on their own. While this is an effective method to make them unique, unfortunately, the result comes out pretty dull sometimes. In this post, we’re going to share our top five design tips to help make your metal business cards outstanding.
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Top 5 Tips to Consider When Designing Your Metal Business Cards
Maintain Simplicity
Regardless of the purpose of your metal business card, be sure not to clutter them with unnecessary information. Remember simplicity is something that itself can improve your cards’ design quotient. Only mention basic and necessary information. These should include the name of your business, your name, your designation, address, and contact information. You can also add any other branding element to the cards without making them look cluttered. It’s also advisable to leave enough empty space around the elements. It’ll help the recipients of your metal business cards distinguish them.
Use Custom Shapes
You don’t necessarily need to follow that standard rectangular shape when designing your metal business card. Get creative and try to use custom shapes to make them truly an eye-catcher. For example, you can round the corners to help the cards stand out. With the help of the die-cutting technique, these days it’s possible to get any shape according to your preference. However, it’s important to consider your industry before going further with the shapes of the cards. You’d also need to decide on your brand’s image that you wish to convey. This is because custom shapes might be perfect for some industries, but in traditional ones, they may not be much effective. Finally, make sure that your metal business cards would fit properly in wallets.
Focus On Typography
When it comes to typography, legibility must be prioritized over anything else. First of all, stay away from using unfamiliar fonts as they might become difficult to read. Instead, use a modern and clean font such as sans serif or slab serif. If you want to combine different types of fonts, remember to use contrasting ones. Regarding the size of the texts, maintain eight pts as the minimum to make them easily readable. However, sometimes you may want the most crucial elements such as the name of your brand to appear more prominently. In those cases, the text sizes can be varied according to your preferences. When choosing the text color for your metal business cards, it should match your brand’s color. Note that if you’ve got a tight budget, it’d be wise to save on colors instead of materials. You can use just one or two colors, which will lower the cost significantly. The proper utilization of typography elements to deliver the intended message through your metal business card isn’t an easy task. Therefore, you should take the help of a professional graphic designer to create a distinctive brand identity. However, some reputable metal card manufacturers have their in-house design team that can offer this service for free.
Choose the Right Thickness
To make the most out of your metal business cards, you’ve to get every aspect right including their thickness. Before you decide on the card thickness, consider how you’ll most likely use them. Note that if you want the cards to have complex designs, the manufacturer will probably use the die-cutting technique. In that case, it’d help to keep 0.3mm thickness as it offers great flexibility for the design. Therefore, the final product will be unique and distinguishable yet lightweight. You can also choose a higher thickness according to your preferences. However, remember that a thicker metal business card comes with additional weight as well. And you’ll have to carry those heavy metal cards around most of the time. If you’re using a purse or a wallet and have got a dozen of them, it might become highly inconvenient.
Choose the Right Manufacturer
A quick online search can help you get the names of a huge number of metal card manufacturers. But how do you know which company would be the best to partner with? You can do this by considering some crucial factors. First of all, check out how long your shortlisted manufacturer has been in this industry. And remember to check the types of projects it has completed in the past. It’ll also help you get a clear understanding of the team’s expertise. If possible, check out samples from a similar project, if it has done one. Another important factor is to check the size of the team of your shortlisted manufacturer(s). If it’s too small with several projects in hand, it mayn’t be the right fit for you. This is particularly crucial to consider if you’ve got a strict timeline. Regardless of the metal you’re going to use for your metal business cards, it’ll be costlier than traditional business cards. Therefore, get quotes from multiple manufacturers and shortlist the ones offering competitive prices. However, remember that the lowest price doesn’t guarantee that the manufacturer will be the right fit for you. Ideally, you should maintain a balance between quality and cost. Lastly, review the quality of its customer service. Going through the reviews posted by its past clients would be a good idea to get an idea of it.
Summing Up
Before you implement the above tips to create your metal business cards, there’s one key thing you need to consider. You need to figure out what you wish to communicate through your cards depending on your brand’s vision and mission. Remember that the most effective metal business cards are the ones that can truly reflect the brand. Once you get a clear idea of these, just stick to the above-mentioned guidelines for the rest parts. And you’ll be able to create business cards that will act as your brand’s visual extension.