business card design techniques

As early as human history, plastic arts have been applied to "records", not only for "records", but also with "announcement effect"; China's Yungang Grottoes, Dunhuang murals, Egyptian pyramids, and temples in Greece and Rome are all relics of the ruler to show his power and status, or to promote religious beliefs. In fact, in the barter era when trading behavior was underdeveloped, there was no need for advertising. Because before the invention of writing, the original pictures were displayed in stone walls or caves. According to the modern design concept, the ancient cave murals were simply "notices", "announcements" or "records", which was the most primitive print advertising design in the night market.

After the writing, the notices of pictures and words were gradually applied to convey opinions in daily life. China expressed them in calligraphy fonts. In the ancient Greek and Roman times, ivy signs were often hung at the entrance of hotels; It was the earliest universal advertising design. Until the Middle Ages, self-sufficient economic productivity led to the rise of commerce; The successive inventions of printing and papermaking have opened up the form and initial scale of modern advertising design. With the rapid change of modern capitalist structure, industrial industrialization and mechanical production have made the scope of business transactions wider and circulation faster. Advertisements for the industry or consumers are also expanding day by day, and graphic design applied to plastic arts is also developing towards diversification. "Business card" design is one of them.

What I want to talk about here is the business card design that belongs to visual communication; Business cards are both "painting" and "design" visual media. In the past, the design of business cards was mostly simple and to the point, but now the business cards used are much more interesting than before. The changes in font performance, color block performance, pattern performance, color performance, decoration performance and even typesetting make business cards no longer a simple and lifeless piece of paper. It becomes a medium for people to deepen their impressions when they meet for the first time.

Explore the form of beauty

What is design? Generally speaking, it is like sending a business card. On the one hand, it is necessary for the other party to know us, and on the other hand, the business card should be beautiful and generous. Basically, the birth of practical and beautiful business cards is design; However, what is the motivation of design? Of course, it is for needs, business needs, and communication needs. This phenomenon is just like human beings need light. Second, candles and electric lights are invented. Therefore, design can be explained by invention. If we look at design from the perspective of invention, designers are scientists, racking their brains, if it is not to create human civilization. Therefore, if we first establish such a complete and sound concept of design, then we will engage in commercial design. It will be possible to create an exquisite and healthy culture through various means in commercial design.

The concept of "beauty" is very abstract, especially for those who are not sent by colleges, and it is often in a dilemma that they cannot think about. But we can be sure that when most people's choices are similar, it is that the design of "business cards" itself has reached a certain form of "beauty". Since the Greek philosopher Aristotle, Kant, Hegel and others have well-known research, together with modern psychological aesthetics scholars, after various analysis and review, the form of beauty has been sorted into seven major items. However, we must also understand that the form is fixed, and the interpretation of the form of beauty should be different in different times.

1. Rhythm: It is not easy to express the method of rhythm by the horror of words or the composition of set graphics, but it is analyzed according to the method of modeling. Generally, it can be divided into two types: repetition and gradual change. When these two methods and rules or irregular phenomena are used alternately, they can develop into infinite graphics.

2. Symmetry: it can convey the psychological feeling of order, stability, static solemnity and majesty; For example, the left and right or the upper and lower equal shapes are called substantial symmetry; The left and right sides or up and down are not completely equal, but when they can also produce a symmetrical feeling visually, they become symmetrical.

3. Contrast: Comparing two relative elements with each other, such as straight line and curve, long and short, thick and thin, bright and dark, black and white, big and small, sharp and dull, produces the phenomenon that the strong is stronger and the weak is weaker; And emphasize each other's characteristics, creating a beautiful contrast.

4. Balance: The stable state is called balance when more than two components are evenly configured. Normal balance has a stable and static feeling; The abnormal balance presents an unstable and dynamic feeling, but it has rich emotions and changes. The balance of general modeling, substantial color, light and shade, size, texture and other feelings.

5. Proportion: Among the proportions, the most talked about is the golden ratio; Greek art mostly uses 1:1.618 to find the beauty of order change. Length ratio, diagonal ratio, dichotomy ratio, trisection ratio, etc. are all regular ratios.

6. Harmony: when two constituent elements coexist, if the characteristics are too strong or too far apart, there will be a contrast phenomenon; If the two can reach an agreement and are not exclusive, they will be in a state of harmony. For example, black and white are in contrast, and the gray between black and white is a kind of harmony, so harmony can be explained by the golden mean.

7. Unity: There are many factors to achieve unity, and color, shape, direction, lightness and texture all have this function; Unity can be explained by "domination" and "subordination"; When many opposing elements exist together, there is a phenomenon of exclusion and competition, so it is necessary to have a main melody to integrate it. With the main melody, there is unity, the theme is dominated, and other parts become subordinate.

(1) How to design business cards?

The basic concept of design is to gather [elements] in a field and interact with each other; This function conveys a message in a known background, and this message is conveyed through visual adjustment and ingenious treatment of the components within the design scope. Basically, these elements are composed of fonts, logos and illustrations, plus the dominant effects of black, white and color.

Elements of a business card

Usually, when designing a business card, the form, color and pattern are designed according to the CI manual or letterhead; The size and shape are often cut according to the size of the wallet; The content is decided by the customer. In order to make the design unconventional, we should give full play to the original and dynamic ideas and make the designed business cards different from the general traditional business cards. Although the expression methods of business card design are different due to industry, appeal angle or customers; However, the materials that make up the picture are generally certain, and these materials are the important elements of business card design, which are called [components] of business card design.

1. The elements that belong to shaping are:

illustrations (like subtle or decorative patterns)

signs (signs of pattern or character shaping)

trade names (standard fonts of commodities, Also known as synthetic text or trademark text)

decorative frame, shading (beautifying the layout and setting off the theme)

2. The elements that belong to the text are:

company name (including the company's full name and business items in Chinese and English)

slogan (a complete short sentence expressing the company's style)

name (professional title and name in Chinese and English)

contact information. Other related elements:

color (matching hue, lightness and chroma)

arrangement (overall arrangement of words and patterns)

These are the constituent elements of business card design, and they have different missions and functions. If the power of these materials is dispersed and acted alone, it will not give full play to the effect; Therefore, how to make these elements maintain the connection and play a unified communication role is an important work of arrangement, which can be said to be the visual unified design of the elements; However, the sense of single beauty and the elements of arrangement are meaningless arrangement. The real purpose of arrangement is to beautify the layout and endow it with functional visual arrangement.

(2) How to arrange the elements

Sometimes, when you are trying to design a business card, if you don't apply some rules, you may encounter some design bottlenecks when integrating different elements. Generally, in order to effectively arrange the elements of business cards, we must first pay attention to:

1. Improve the psychological contact effect between the other party and the created business cards.

2. Give top priority to graphic processing (graphic design) for the artistic design problems which are conveyed by visual elements. When designing business cards, the problem of composition is the most important. There are ten representative forms of business card composition, such as upright, oblique, uneven, cross, radial, graphic, S-shaped, contrast and scattered. The personality of each shape is introduced as follows:

1. Upright shape: It has a sense of stability and is a strong composition, and the line of sight will be from top to bottom.

2. Oblique shape: it is a strong and dynamic composition, and the line of sight will advance from top to bottom or from bottom to top due to the oblique angle.

3. Horizontal shape: stable and calm composition, and the line of sight will move left and right.

4. Cross: A symmetrical composition of vertical lines and horizontal lines, which is formed by the vertical lines, left and right lines, or the orthogonal lines are inclined to cross. No matter how the inclination of the cross changes, the main eye points will be concentrated at the intersection point of the cross.

5. Parallelism: vertical parallelism, horizontal parallelism, oblique parallelism, etc. Any kind of parallelism will have the feeling of dividing the layout into two. Horizontal parallelism has a sense of stability than vertical parallelism, and oblique parallelism has a sense of dynamic experience.

6. Radial shape: A variety of conditions are unified in one eye point, which has diverse and unified visual effects.

7, graphics: the line of sight will draw a circular rotation in writing, which can attract attention.

8. s-shape: mutually opposing conditions can be unified in a relative way.

9. Contrast shape: the kinetic energy composition of balanced force (components of shape and color).

1. Decentralized form: Although the focus is scattered, the whole feeling still has a unified atmosphere and effect.

(3) How to change the layout design

A good business card should be able to skillfully show the original functions and exquisite design of the business card; The main purpose of business card design is to deepen people's impression, and at the same time, they can quickly associate their expertise and interests. Therefore, attractive business cards are often lively and interesting.

business cards are often designed with envelope stationery. When designing, in addition to other people's opinions, we should also refer to other people's business cards; Because exquisite design can increase the trust of the other party invisibly, the content of business card design should be gradual. The following is an introduction to the process of business card design:

1. Choose the paper suitable for business cards.

2. Decide the size and shape of the business card design.

3. establish the location of the design or company logo.

4. Follow the pattern design of envelopes and stationery.

5. Make a series of supplementary designs.

6. Reserve space for names and titles.

7. The logo is the same color and font as envelopes and stationery.

8, put forward a variety of design styles.

designing this course requires the accumulation of experience; Although I have no ability to design, it is also a good design method to refer to the business cards designed by others and then change the layout design. Here are a few examples for each partner. The same components, because of different designs, show different business card styles and impressions.

1. Expression of character design

As we all know, character is one of the most important visual media in human daily life, and it has become the disseminator of academic culture. Font design is to make the spirit of character skillful and enhance the charm of character. Therefore, when characters are applied in design industry, they are not only for conveying information, but also for [decoration] \ [appreciation] and enhancing impression.

Due to the rapid development of advertising and the influence of the worldwide design trend, whether advertising companies or individuals are engaged in design work, in order to meet business needs or express their personal design ideas, in addition to the changes in printed fonts; It also produced many novel fonts with decorative and changeable features. [Hand-painted font] is a special font that is completely different from traditional fonts under the premise of emphasizing lightness and creative interest in writing.

when designing business cards, the industry often affects the expression of word shaping; For example, soft pen fonts are suitable for use in tea houses. The theme sources of character design are: the company's full name in Chinese and English, Chinese and English initials, character symbols, etc., and the glyphs include Vientiane, the designed glyphs, the engraved glyphs and the traditional glyphs. Finally, we should pay attention to the cooperation between font and writing to create the atmosphere of the layout and shape the famous brand into another new visual language.

2, illustration design performance

The content of the scheme, the expression of the theme or the key points of the product are expressed in the form of drawing books, with the purpose of illustrating the text, emphasizing the original security, and having complete and independent visual shape, which is called illustration. In the modern society where commercial advertisements are frequent, illustrations are applied to almost any printed matter with advertising nature, so the form, content and skills of illustrations have also become one of the focuses of advertising appeal. The choice of illustrations can be divided into two categories: [true image] and [abstract]. Designers must consider universality or representativeness when creating, so that they can resort to the mind to analyze the data, choose the elements to remove the impurities, and make a combination of creative skills of shape and color; Induce the consumption of everyone's vision, and have a * * * mood for illustrations; Therefore, illustration is an important material to form personality and attract vision among the elements of business cards. Most importantly, illustrations can directly express the structure or industry of the company, so as to convey the understandable [reading effect] of the advertising content.

3. Design expression of color

Color is a complex language, which has expressions of emotions and sorrows. Sometimes people will be elated, and sometimes they will be soul-stirring. In addition to visual effects, color also affects sensory organs, such as yellow, which reminds people of acid, soft color is touch, and fragrant color is smell, which can prove how complex and diverse the influence of color on human psychology and physiology is. Therefore, business card designers should first understand the corporate image of each company when they are engaged in the regular combination of colors. Color is a kind of combined media, and the intensity of color lies not in the size of area, but in the influence of regular configuration; The hue of color comes from the characteristics of color, and can also be obtained according to the hue size and position relationship.

TINT, who has become indifferent to color taboos and turned to pursue individuality, can successfully master the application of business card color as long as he can combine the strong feelings felt by consumers; On the other hand, no matter how well the content is arranged, it can't attract everyone's attention to the content of the business card if the power of color on people is not fully used, or if the TINT is wrong. Therefore, when choosing the color of the primary color paper of the business card, we must think carefully with the design creativity, otherwise the spread business card may cause damage to the image of the individual or the enterprise.

4. Design expression of decorative frame and shading

Decorative frame and shading are the elements of graphic design; In the design of business cards, it is not an essential material, but mostly for decorative purposes.

the design of business cards should first attract the attention of the other party, so that the other party can concentrate on understanding the contents of the business cards; Therefore, a clear line or shading in a business card is sometimes defensive and sometimes aggressive. In the case of decorative frames, the role of decorative frames in arrangement is to control the other party's field of vision and achieve the purpose of understanding the content; But if decorated.