Tips on promotional card design? I'm bad at this..

[shanecb]

So we decided to make some cards (on Avery 8871 business cards) for our blog that we can give to people when we tell them about our site (in my signature). So I plugging away in Photoshop when I realized I kind of suck at design.

I'm hoping I could get some ideas/design tips from people who are more creative than myself.

Current front: http://i.imgur.com/PFL6U.jpg
Current back: http://i.imgur.com/bLndA.jpg

Mostly I have no idea what to put in the front, or what to do to jazz up the back. Help?

 

[Mongrel]

the whole http://www. is unnecessary. Just put theBrewGuys.com, set up email at your URL, not at yahoo, and @thebrewguys is obviously twitter.

What are you going to use in the white space on the front of the cards? Get the white The Brew Guys to offset a little better against the hops background, easy with a little black/dark green/etc drop shadow. The pyramid of text on the back of the cards doesn't pull me in. All of the relevant info can go on the front of the card, leave this blank for a personal hand written note if needed. Don't pay for double sided printing when it's not needed.

 

[shanecb]

the whole http://www. is unnecessary. Just put theBrewGuys.com, set up email at your URL, not at yahoo, and @thebrewguys is obviously twitter.

What are you going to use in the white space on the front of the cards? Get the white The Brew Guys to offset a little better against the hops background, easy with a little black/dark green/etc drop shadow. The pyramid of text on the back of the cards doesn't pull me in. All of the relevant info can go on the front of the card, leave this blank for a personal hand written note if needed. Don't pay for double sided printing when it's not needed.

Thanks a lot for all of the tips. I'm printing myself, so not worried about the cost of printing. I might have to end up moving everything to just one side of the card, like you mentioned, if I don't come up with something to take up more space on the front of the card. It's definitely too blank at the moment.

 

[jd3]

The title or address should be the focus.... not the "about". Make it bigger and make the "about" smaller. No one cares about the "news, reviews, etc". They want to know how to find it and you are going to tell them what it is about when you hand it to them.

The first design will transition to print horribly. you will barely be able to read it and the color hops will come out poorly with the avery stock and inkjet printers. Find a design with a bar or the like.

Really, you'd be further ahead to spend 15 bucks and use one of the designers through vistaprint.com and get real printing. I've done this in the past for my side business and the results were good. Use a nice traditional design and they turn out very nice.

It says 3.99 but after you upload an image(i guess you don't have one) and choose a few things expect it to be 15. The quality will be 50x better than you will get at home and the edges will be much better.

 

[jd3]

If you really wanted you could even use some of their "beer" themes.

http://www.vistaprint.com/premium-b...e=1&pagesize=24&pf_id=088&preid=3&xnav=search

I am partial to the "conservative" designs:
http://www.vistaprint.com/premium-b...e=1&pagesize=24&sort=p_TO!desc&xnav=gn&xnid=2


There are lots of nice looking options there and they are super quick. Focus on "branding" and name recognition. Shouldn't have to search the card to figure out who you are and what you want me to do.

Consider putting your name on it, too. Another nice option is vistaprint will let you put something on the back side and you can put the web address on there. For addresses I do www.rootmedic.net I don't put http, but put www as I personally think it looks better.

 

[FrFtr28]

The first design will transition to print horribly. you will barely be able to read....

This is the first thing I noticed. Use a thicker font, or just bold what you have now to make "The Brew Guys" stand out more.

 

[adivito]

Since this is what I do as a living, I'll through my .02 in here. First dont cheap out on cards (good quality cards arent expensive) It is one of the first items please see when you meet them, you want them to remember you. I could go on a rant for days about vistaprint and they other "free" card providers, but I'll save that for another time. If these are for promotion, do something different than a card. Since you a brew related business, get coasters made up, hand those out or go to your favorite bars and ask if they would use them. You would be surprised how open top ideas people are when you tell them they are free.