Business Card Design Recommendations + Toy Store Ads

Business Card Critique
I learned a lot about graphic design this week, which reinforced for that I usually do well at spotting good design. Yet, creating that design is hard.

For this blog post, I thought I'd do a critique of a poorly-designed business card I found online. The site highlights the card for having too many typefaces and feeling cluttered. So I thought I'd expand a bit more on this based on my readings.

I listed 10 things I thought could be changed. The first half of the list relates to design, and the second half relates to content.

1. Bulky border – In "White Space is Not Your Enemy," one of the layout errors is having a thick border to hide the negative space. A border isn't a bad thing, but it should be understated.
2. Inconsistent colors – Baby blue and teal aren't complementary colors. According to the Color section of Design Rules of Thumb/Principles and Elements of Art/Design, solid blue goes well with orange. Perhaps with the white background, the color aspect of the wolf logo wouldn't be an eyesore.
3. Lack of visual grouping – Some of the key information is along the borders with the address placed where there was space for it. In the Grouping chapter of Design Basics Index, it reinforces placing like components together. In this case, phone and email should be relatively close together.
4. Inconsistent spacing – This is related to No. 3, but the negative space above the address feels like an empty space. A more aesthetically pleasing option would be to have a more appropriate logo sized smaller and centered with the text centered and slight spacing separating key components, or have the logo placed on the left with a vertical line separating the key components, similar to the business cards shown on pg. 22 of Design Basics Index.
5. Inconsistent alignment – This comment is mainly because the email address placed as vertical text. Everything else is horizontal, so as a potential consumer I shouldn't have to turn the card. That said, I think some good designers could break the rules and get away with this if the rest of the design flows. Unfortunately, I don't see this as an exception.
6. Inadequate fonts – The site where this card originated already mentioned too many fonts. I would recommend sticking to not only two fonts but changing the font so it is more of a consistent sans serif style, such as a Helvetica or Arial. Right now, I feel like the fonts are too varied for the type of business it is.
7. Lack of concrete info – The person listed as a title of "software developer" and the company's name is "Business Application Developers". I want to assume this is a B2B business, but I'm not certain. I want some kind of a slogan or subhead that explains who their client is.
8. Poor slogan – I get the reference to BAD (Business Application Developers), but in this case, I find the acronym to be weak. The better way to get around this if the user wanted to keep the BAD reference is to make the first letters of the company name stand out. That said, it still wouldn't be effective. After all, you wouldn't answer the phone, "Thank you for calling BAD. How can I help you?"
9. Confusing logo – I'm assuming there are wolves in Alaska, but I'm not sure what a wolf has to do with business development applications. I don't necessarily see having a wolf as part of the logo as a bad thing, but in this case, it doesn't make sense. It seems a wolf would be more fitting for a state park. A computer image or something related to software or business would be more fitting.
10. Missing and unnecessary information – The only vital piece missing on this card is a web address, which should be placed in close proximity to the contact information in a horizontal orientation. Finally, the address listed is a PO Box. It seems an address would only be important if this was a storefront business. The mailing address should be left out if this person works from a private residence but makes house calls.

References: 
- Hagen, R. & Golombisky, K. (2017). White Space Is Not Your Enemy: A Beginner's Guide to Communicating Visually Through Graphic, Web & Multimedia Design 3rd Edition. Focal Press: Boca Raton, FL
- Krause, J. (2004). Design Basics Index: A Graphic Designer's Guide to Designing Effective Compositions, Selecting Dynamic Components and Developing Creative Concepts. David & Charles: UK.
- Color Rules of Thumb. Retrieved from http://www.writedesignonline.com/resources/design/rules/color.html.

Revised Business Card

Photographers aren't designers, but they do a good amount of design work. Even though I am a photographer and have designed marketing materials before, it's always humbling and eye-opening to learn new things. I decided, therefore, to do a before-and-after of my current business card. After 8 years as a photographer, I hired a graphic designer last year and rebranded. I wanted my logo to look more corporate, which was a reflection of the vast majority of work I was already doing. I loved the end result. The tagline of the business name and "Lifestyle Stories by Shuva Rahim" are part of the logo. I took the new logo and designed my current business card last year, which is this first image.

After reading through the design content this week, I shifted a few things. I centered the content and split it up a bit to give the text some breathing space. I'm still undecided actually on the social media logos since I only have a business account on Facebook. Yet, part of me likes the logos only because it gives the newer version a sense of balance that didn't exist before. I also took out the word "Lifestyle" in my title since it was already in the logo. Even though I primarily do commercial/journalistic work. I didn't want to feel confined by the word necessarily so I didn't include it in the title.

I did both layouts in Photoshop.

Toy Store Ads

Finally, after reading a chunk of Design Basics Index, I took on the challenge of designing a toy store ad twice with multiple images. All the photos were from Getty Images. After looking up toys nothing really settled with me so I decided to narrow it to vintage planes, coming up with a fictitious company called Vintage Playground Co. I was likely thinking of my 2.5-year-old nephew in the process. Both ads were designed in Photoshop. The hardest part was deciding how to lay out an ad with multiple related images. I've always been a 1-image kind of designer. Nevertheless, for this first ad, I used a dominant image and then found a second image, which I decided to repeat toward the bottom. I consider this a loosely-structured ad.

The second had is more highly-structured. I used different images but kept some components the same as the first one.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your feedback.

Shuva