Typophile

Business card - composition / style questions

ThomasSpring

Dear typophiles community

not being a professional designer (rather a number crunshing finance guy) I have tortured my brain over the layout of a business card for a newly established company in the finance sector and would like to get your views on some questions plus any helpful criticism.

The logo consisting of a [graphical element] + "Syntaxis capital" [serpentine] is set. The card should be easy on the eye and convey a professional look and feel.

Q1: I have not been able to find examples for bcard where the logo (containing wording) is rotated against the information block. I believe this makes the logo appear more graphical and should also improve recognition without diminishing seriousness (see Verdana upper right vs left side)

Q2: if I keep the logo in the upper right corner should the information block align with the left of the logo wording or with the graphical element (actually the lower left corner of the graphical element) (see franklin gothic logo ailgnment)

Q3: does it matter to mix serif for the name/title/info block with sans-serif for the logo wording (see serif vs. sans-serif)

Q4: is it my personal impression that for serif types Bodoni is more elegant in the bcard context than Georgia? (see serif types Bodoni vs Georgia)

Thank you for your comments and ideas

Thomas

AttachmentSize
Verdana_upper right_vs_left side.png4.4 KB
FranklinGothic_logo alignment.png4.61 KB
Serif(Georgia) vs Sans-S (Verdana).png4.45 KB
Serif types Bodoni vs Georgia.png4.48 KB
timd

Q1 I don't agree, the alignment should be the same
Q2 Align on the logo wording
Q3 It is quite acceptable to have a serif or sans as long as they don't come to close to mimicking the logo
Q4 Elegance is subjective but I would definitely lean toward Georgia in this case because the high contrast and the smaller x-height of a Bodoni are too much for the small size required for business cards

It looks to me that you have used a faux italic in some cases, please don't. Although both Verdana and Georgia were primarily developed for screen use they can work well for print. Out of the choices you provided I think that the Verdana upper right works best I would enlarge the logo from the top left to align the type with the text block and move the name vertically closer to the address block. Something to consider is that if you have a longer email address you will run over the edge of the card so look at moving the whole block to the left to allow plenty of space.

Hope this is of some help, to save the headache though you might be better approaching a professional designer.
Tim

ThomasSpring

Tim

thanks for the feedback. We will at some point certainly get a professional review of all collateral but at this stage our best effort will have to do...

Verdana was actually also my preferred font. In regards to Q2 I am still struggling with the alignment because the rather "slim" graphical element in the logo seems somewhat out of place to me when positioned left of the text block. However, I will work on the size as you have suggested and see how that will impact it.

Thanks again, Thomas

Captured from web.archive.org on 15 Apr 2012. view this capture