Bob Schecter has the business card of a fool but his card is not foolish. I met Bob Shechter “The Networking Fool” at LinkedIn. Bob sent me a few of his business cards for review. After my initial consultation Bob went back to the drawing board and revised his business card layout. I believe these examples illustrate that you can have a number of good ideas and at some point there is no right or wrong choice as to your ultimate design. It may simply be a matter of personal asthetics. Take a look at the following designs then go to the bottom of this post to see which card was chosen.
With the exception of #4 I do not think Bob could go wrong with any of these layouts. They are all well balanced designs. Some are better than others for various reasons. I will freely admit that I liked #2, though vertical cards can present other issues since they are somewhat unusual. However there are times when it is the best choice and can work very well particularly when you have a lot of information to get on a card in an orderly fashion. That was not the case here so #5 was my final pick. I think I liked it because I prefer asymmetry and like the angle created by the copy, and the way it reinforces the image. Also the tagline creates a strong baseline at the bottom of the card.
But Bob diplomatically put it up for a vote and found that #3 was the favorite. My guess is that most people react favorably to copy that is centered as opposed to copy that is asymmetrical. This could pose the question, is the intent of good design to simply please the observer or should it challenge their preconceived notions? I’ll let you ponder that for yourselves. In the end, the most important thing is for Bob to have a card that he feels good about giving away to people and that the card communicates his message in a succinct and coherent fashion. There is no question that Bob has achieved his objective. He has a good descriptive tagline, an image that reinforces his message and necessary contact information.
WTG Bob. Great job! No foolin’.