In looking for something to represent your business, it’s only expected that you want it to look its best. Print advertisements, big or small, represent your company and should not be ignored. Yes, even if it comes in the smallest dimensions like your business card.

Not only is a business card going to be what people use to remember who you are, but quite often you’re actually there when you hand it to them. You’ll see that person look right down at your card and you’ll have to deal with whatever their reaction will be.

Here are some of the basic tenants of any high quality business card. I don’t plan to get into anything too fancy, and really, you can design your own business card with ease if you know all of the basics for what makes a card effective.

The first thing to look for is the information you plan on putting on your card. Ask yourself what you want people to know about you. Obviously your name should be on it, but what kind of contact info? Do you want a phone number, an email address, a fax number, maybe a building number? Maybe you have an office phone, a cell phone, and a home phone that you might consider using, or multiple email addresses that would all work.

Wouldn’t that be a little too much information? Probably. A good business card needs to be concise enough that people can just glance at it and get all of the information they need. The more complicated you make your cards, the less likely it will be that people will bother wanting to sort through the mess of information.

Figure out only the best pieces of information and that’s what you’re going to stick with.

Now, let’s talk about the design. If you have a company logo you definitely want to make sure that’s on your card. Any good logo shouldn’t be overly complicated or too colorful. Where you place the logo is up to you, but I’d say it would probably be best to keep it close to your name. A colorful logo will be the first thing someone looks at, which means your name will be the second if the logo is close enough to it.

When it comes to something like font type I would try to primarily stick to a single style. You could probably get away with two fonts, such as having your company name in a different font, but any more than that will make the card look messy.

Also remember that white space isn’t always a bad thing. Don’t try to fill your card up with too much info or too many pictures. Sometimes I like to be able to write something down on the back of my business cards. Why rob people of the ability?

All of these things can be handled and designed in something as simple as Adobe Photoshop. You don’t have to be an expert in design to make your print business cards look professional.