Adding a photo of yourself can add a very personal touch
to your business cards that can be very helpful. People like to feel
like they're doing business with a person rather than a faceless corporation.
There are some simple things to consider when choosing a photo for your
business cards:
 Make
sure it's good photo for business cards
and it's up to date. Let's say you're a Rolls Royce dealer in Beverly
Hills. You'll want to use a photo of yourself dressed in a nice suit
on a good hair day, not some photo from back on the farm in 1985 when
you were wearing a mullet and a Skynard t-shirt. Even if you're a
little concerned about some wrinkles and thinning hair, it's better
for people to recognize the person on the business cards.
- Give us some room to work with the photo
for your business cards. There should be some extra space around
the subject of the photo. Don't send a photo for your business cards
if the top of your head is cut off or if your arms or elbows are cut
off. Sometimes we can still work these into business
card designs, but it works better if we have room to cut out the
background and super-impose your photo into the business
card background.
- If you're sending a photo to cover the entire background
of your business cards, it should have even more room around the subject
so we'll have room to add text over it and room to cut the photo to
size. For instance; if you want a photo of a boat as your business
card background, you'd want the boat to cover less than half the area
of the entire photo with plenty of water underneath and plenty of
sky overhead. Cutting business cards is not an exact science so, for
business cards with images or color that goes to the edges of the
business cards, we use a 'bleed' process. 'Bleed' means that the background
of the business cards actually goes
a little beyond the edge of the finished card and gets cut away after
printing. So make sure your business card background
photo has some expendable room at the edges. Using the boat as
an example again; make sure there's plenty of sea and sky all around
the boat.
- The photo for your business cards should be sharp,
clear and in focus. You'd be surprised at how many people send us
blurry photos for their business cards.
- Business cards should have
bright, rich colors. Try to send photos
for your business cards that have good lighting and rich color. We
can do a lot to improve the quality of a photo, particularly in this
area, but the better the photo is to begin with, the better it will
look on your business cards.
 You
don't necessarily need to hire a pro photographer to get a good photo
for your business cards. But don't just have a co-worker snap one
shot and call it good enough. Take several shots so you can choose
the best one for business cards.
- Printing business cards (or
anything else for that matter) requires a very high resolution in
order to get a sharp clear image on paper. In contrast, websites
do not require very high resolution. The files we use to print
business cards from are at least three times as big as the final
printed business cards. There are two ways
to accomplish this; 1) send a photo that
is at least three times larger than you want it to appear on your
business cards. If the photo should cover the entire 3 ½"
x 2" business card, send a photo that's at least 10 ½"
x 6". 2) Send a photo that has been scanned at 300 dpi (check
you scanner options before scanning, it's in there). You can always
send us a print of your photo in the mail and we'll scan it for you
and send it back at no charge. This will make absolutely sure that
the photo looks great on your business cards, it just takes a little
longer
- Don't send photos for your business cards that you
copied from your website. They're simply too small (see #7).
Adding photos of your products to your business cards
 Showing
some examples of products or services on your business
cards is a very good idea. But keep it simple; we don't have much
room to work with. Three or four small images are usually plenty. Just
choose the images that best represent what you offer, and then we can
design a collage or something interesting to display them on your business
cards. Many customers have had great success with using these kinds
of photos on the front of their business cards and placing their text
info on the back of the cards.
All the aforementioned principles still apply to product images, but
we can usually use photos that are a bit smaller.
|
