I do a lot of business networking and I collect a lot of business cards. Sadly, about 25% of the time, the cards miss the mark or the general point of a business card. Your business card is many times one of your first pieces of marketing material that gets to a potential client. While you need to provide a couple really important pieces of info, you need to make sure to KIS your business card – Keep It Simple.

Your business card needs to include your company name and/or logo, your name, phone number, email address (it is the year 2014 after all), and some way to provide a quick explanation of what you do. For the overall design, just something simple will do the trick. A solid color is fine; a simple background image is fine. A business card with too much info or too many design features is going to be confusing. Just make sure to Keep It Simple. I’ve seen too many business cards that had more colors than the rainbow and looked like the only purpose for the business card was to see how much info they could cram into a little 3×2 inch card.

What I also hate seeing in a business card is when the company tries to fit an entire brochure or website on their card. You don’t need to list each and every service you offer or each and every flavor of ice cream you enjoy (yes, I’ve seen that on a card before and no, he didn’t sell ice cream). I’ve been handed a few business cards that had a testimonial on the card as well. The problem with the testimonial was that it became confusing as toward whose business card it was, the person giving the testimonial or the person receiving it.

If your business card is overly complex, think of the things that are most important to have on it, and KIS your card. Use your card to push people to your site or to just pick up the phone and call you. If you need some help designing your business card, get in touch and we’ll put some ideas together for a more efficient business card.