Writing Journey part IV: taking the conversation into the real world - business card design

Business cards are always important despite having a blog, twitter, G+, facebook et al. Business card design and design in general is something that I have spent a lot of time learning about and experimenting on. I set about the business card design with a very clear objective. On the front I wanted to have the cover (I opted for warm yellow and purple base) that was desgined by my amazing book cover designer, Derek Murphy www.bookcovers.creativindie.com

working dad business card – front

On the reverse side I had to choose whether I wanted a secondary image or to have a clean background with just text. If I did want a secondary image I had to source one that complemented the image on the front of the card with being overpowering and reinforced the message I wanted to tell.

It boiled down to essentially two choices, first was whether I wanted to show a father and his baby or a father and his child. Then I had to decide upon the layout options to keep the image in background and have the text links to the book and the website at the fore.

As with all things I did a youTube search for business card designs and came up with this rather interesting video while I ate my dinner (sadly yes more and more meals are being eaten infront of computer nowadays)

From there I developed some business card ideas which I crudely sketched out to decide on what the best layout would be and how I could make the calls to action more prominent.

sketches 1 to 9

sketches 10 to 12

sketches 13 to 18

Here are the designs I came up with.

business card design reverse take 03

business card design reverse take 04

business card design reverse take 05

business card design reverse take_06b

business card design reverse take_08

of course I want your opinion, I need to get these cards printed asap, which one do you like the most?

The book is going to be launched tomorrow – here’s hoping it can make a positive difference to many families. Thanks so much for your support

Thanks so much for reading, the book will be launched in the next couple of days, the more eagle eyed among you will have deduced the URL, if so please go ahead and be among the first people to buy the book.

When you do please share the link to all fathers who could do with the help. Ultimately the book is there to help the whole family, everyone has their part to play in the family, being a dad myself I wanted to write a book aimed at dads so we can have a world with more engaged fathers in.

Thanks for your support.

Farhan