In Search Of: A Business Card Design

Nothing makes you feel like a prize doofus more than when you tell someone you're an illustrator and they ask you for your card... and you realize you don't have one.

With that in mind, the past several months I've been on a quest to design an appropriate business card for myself.

It's been a long and painful process (OK, more like an off and on process whenever I would remember I was supposed to be coming up with one), but I think I've finally found one I can live with.

At first I was going to just have one large image of Biff (the little guy in the upper left corner) on the card, as he's unintentionally become my face on the web. But then I wished I could feature more of my art on the card somehow.

Just for the heck of it I laid out a card full of characters I've drawn, in a grid of tiny squares. I figured they'd be so small you wouldn't be able to tell what you were looking at, but was pleasantly surprised when I printed out a sample and saw that the faces were perfectly legible. Small, but definitely recognizable.

But if I used this design then I had no idea where I would put my contact info. Thankfully I discovered that most print shops will now print on both sides of a business card. So I just stuck my logo and all my contact info on the reverse side. Finally, a business card I'm reasonably happy with.

Now I need to get to the print shop, stat!

The various tiny faces were all drawn in Photoshop on the graphic tablet. The card was laid out in InDesign.

Here are the runners-up in my quest for a personal business card.

I didn't really plan it, but Biff, the surly little bald guy, has sort of become the face of my online presence (no, he does not resemble me, thank you very much), so I felt like he should be featured on the card for consistency's sake.

I like the bottom one a lot, but I wanted to somehow feature more than just one illustration, so I had to go with the grid of faces. Better luck next time, Biff.