If you are a sales clerk or an on the go business marketer, I bet that you always try to do your own business card printing with your own designs. A mark of a true marketer and sales clerk is a dynamic business persona.
One who adapts to changing market environments with business cards that change to boot. I have worked with many of these marketers and I have seen them switch from a lot of different templates and themes as they try to be competitive in their work.
While business card templates might work best probably for marketers and maybe even for you, it is still a better move to create on your own and develop your own kind of template. For a truly personal kind of design that is original in all respects, it is necessary to do this.
Therefore, if you like the idea of creating their own templates for business, I have here a list of tips that should help you. Below are all the basic things you will need to know to create your own.
•Decide on a set dimension/configuration – It never really is good to change from different sized business cards. This not only presents you with little problems in storage, but in terms of your designs, changing from one size to another with a template is not efficient. Therefore, if you are creating your own, I recommend that you choose the best configuration for your purposes and set that as your standard dimension.
For example, if you are doing a lot of foreign business and are always meeting people from around the world, then you might want to use the international dimension standards in business card printing (ISO standard settings). If all your business is in your country though, then it is good to use the standard configuration in your country. There are specific industry or market standard configurations that you may want to use as well. Just try to stick to the most useful configuration so that your template can help you with the most number of designs and contacts.
• Set guidelines and margins – It is also recommended that you set guidelines and margins for your custom templates. Guidelines and margins are a great bonus since it helps people build a business card design easily by guiding them quickly to the right areas to design on and avoid. Most design software should have the ability to let you set guidelines so go for it.
• Set printing bleeds – Printing bleeds are an important part in printing, especially if you have a background image or color in your layout. The printing bleeds help the printing process get easier since printers would not have to worry about being accurate with their printing and cutting. Thus, it is good to always add those printing bleeds into your template. A good value for a printing bleed is an extra one quarter of an inch for each side. So set those edge guidelines and then add the extra space for the printing bleed.
• Insert the must have content already: Finally, all personal templates will of course probably need some standard or “must have” content already. This includes the name, the job title, logos etc. Make sure that you add these must have content into your template so that it becomes more useful and speeds up your design/layout process.
Great! Try to remember these tips for your business card templates. With all these things integrated as a part of your template, you should have a detailed, useful and personal template that can help you as a marketer easily adapt your designs for your market. Good Luck!