Business Cards

Samuraidragon13

GDC is right around the corner and one of the things that I want to make sure that I have this year are my business cards. However I'm not all that happy with the business cards that I currently have. Also I mainly specialize in Environment Art and Animation, but I also just became an indie developer. So I'm not sure what I should represent myself as with my card. Thank you in advance for any critiques you might have.

Front


Back

Poseiden

Samuraidragon The first thing I would change is having your art on the business card. The art dates the card. It may be great for GDC, but think about after GDC or when you create a new project that’s better. Think about making a graphic or symbol to represent yourself, which repeats on your website.

Secondly, I’d remove the name from the back. It doesn’t need repeating. The LinkedIn link can be removed, because it can easily be on your website.

PyrZern

I am skeptical about showing art on the card itself... It could be very small or low res that you can't see anything but blurry hallway.

Joebewon

If you've got a logo and a color scheme for your website, I would try to match that to your card.

Also, it helps to keep everything aligned to one side of the card for consistently. I think there are some websites that have templates you can use to make your card look snazzy!

Ferg

Unless you're a graphic designer, just use a simple business card template from the web. The people you're giving these to are going to have so many cards in their bag by the end of GDC, they're not even going to bother with cards that aren't easy to understand.

edit: Holy hell, I just did a google search for business card templates... I underestimated the internet's capacity to produce awful things. Here's an example of what I meant by simple and clean



It's the same principle for portfolios. It's tempting to make something flashy and artistic and unique, but 99 times out of a hundred, that will only hurt you. Your business card and portfolio exist to make it as fast and easy as possible for employers to see your work. I've lost track of the number of applicants who's portfolios didn't get fully explored simply because they over-designed their website and it was just too much of a hassle getting from one image to another.

You want a clean, simple card to make it as easy as possible for people to get to your portfolio, then let your art do the talking.

Meloncov

I've always included art, on the theory that someone who I show my portfolio to at an event is more likely to remember me by my art than my name. It's too small to work as much of a showcase, but it works as a reminder.

On the flip-side, though, I heard people say it's best to leave a bunch of white space, to leave room for the recipient to write notes, which is kinda at odds with including art.