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Put your Business Identity to Work

Now that you have gone through the process of researching and selecting your business name—your professional identity, it's time to think about how you'll make visual use of your name on your business and marketing materials.

Since your business card is so often the first impression a potential client will have, make it count. All of your other materials (stationery, labels, envelopes ad formats, etc.) should be coordinated with your business card design, which is the emphasis of this article.

Your goal should be to arrive at a design that is as much logo-like as possible. By the term, 'logo', I mean a visual image that does not need text to identify it: here are some examples:

—like the Mercedes Benz symbol, Target's concentric red circles, the unmistakable Apple with the bite or the McDonald's golden arches. While the use of an individual's name doesn't easily lend itself to the same true logo design, the selection of a font, relative type size, placement, color, and tag line—if you choose to use one—is certainly doable. The most important aspect of cementing your identity is to use your design consistently across all your business materials.

If your budget allows, you can simply hire a graphic designer or image management consultant, or you can just do it yourself.

I am one of the people who marvel at the original and fabulous signage I see in places like Carmel, Sausalito or Aspen—mainly because I consider myself to be terrible at graphic design. However, I can recommend two books that have really helped me understand some logic, and make sense of at least some graphic design principles.

The Non-Designer's Design Book, Robin Williams
Robin Williams Design Workshop, Robin Williams and John Tollett

While I am still not very good at graphic design, I am learning to identify why I find some designs compelling and some dreadful. It is not dissimilar to the way I study pictorial composition. Look at your business logo in terms of tried and true compositional principles…balanced but unequal division of space, careful use of negative spaces, clear value massing and visual direction.

I collect various business cards so that I am always increasing my inventory of both good and bad examples for my students.

Here are some things to avoid:

Business card stock that is flimsy, cheap looking and unsuitable for photo-quality reproduction—even if you are not using a portrait image. Micro perforation on prepared business card sheets is usually not at all micro, and is subject to worn, dirty edges after being handled just a few times.

Scatter gram design. Plunking text and images—yes, even clip-art images—so that there is something filling up every bit of available white space.

Clip-art. You are a painter of original portraits. Don't present yourself as someone who finds some of the least imaginative images as acceptable.

Using a pen to cross out an old address or phone number, and then writing in the updated information. The message? "I care enough to do things half-way!" Or worse, "I believe in short-cuts to quality!" You wouldn't believe how many professional artists I see doing this! Portraits are expensive. Business cards are cheap.

The Yellow Pages principle. Just check out the back cover to your local yellow pages or look at the full page ads under Accident! Injury! Lawyers! I think you'll see my point. Subtlety and good taste are what we and our products are about.

Poor image quality. If you will be using an image of one of your portraits, it needs be reproduced with the same quality as the 8x10 print you include in your portfolio.

Poor image selection. In the tiny space available on a business card, your four-subject full-length portrait, no matter how heroic, will be visually lost. If you will be utilizing a detail of a portrait, be certain that the cropped section stands alone as a portrait. Don't crop an image that contains compositional tangents, is forced into an orientation that doesn't work or isn't anything you'd proudly show to represent your work.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

Fonts must be readable, and work with the overall design. A 12-point Palace Script defeats the purpose. Most fonts need to be about 9 points to read easily.

Every image you use must read just as well in black and white as it does in color. While it is less likely that your business card will be photocopied in black and white, it is certainly possible that your letterhead, advertisements or other materials will.

The color stock should be consistent across all your materials, although it is likely to be necessary for your business card to be glossy to carry the image properly.

Limit text to what is absolutely necessary. Title, image size and medium are rarely, if ever, necessary.

Establish a template. Printing technology ain't what it used to be. The best part is that it's not necessary to order 5,000 business cards at a time. Once you have a template established you can order—or print them yourself—in smaller quantities, so that you can continually update your images.

Our profession is about tradition and dignity, yet we also now live in 2006. Personalize your visual identity in a way that is uniquely personal to you as a portrait artist.

An update…

Fortunately, I didn't complete this article until after the Portrait Society of America's annual meeting in Dallas this May. I was fortunate to be able to participate in a panel discussion, chaired by artist Luana Luconi Winner, on the use of technology in the artist's studio. I was introduced to a number of exciting new concepts, including the digital business card.

I've just printed my first batch, and it's a whole lot of fun. They look like this (clear plastic case behind):

I've used the same image for the cover as is currently on my business card.

Luana describes these little things as big on the "cool" scale, relating a story of a recent flight where the passenger next to her asked what type of work she did. The conversation went something like this:

Luana: "I'm a portrait painter."

Passenger: "Oh, that's interesting—do you have a card?"

Luana: "Well of course—in fact, why don't you pull put your laptop to take a look?"
Passenger: "That is so cool!"

Luana: "Please, keep it." —knowing that the first thing he's likely to do upon reaching his office/home is to say, "Look at this very cool card I got from a woman on the plane…"

You can get the CDs from http://www.cdrdvdrmedia.com/ritek-business-card-cdr-blank-media-disc.html, as well as the labels. The CDs hold 80 megabytes of information. I ordered 100, and the cost was 51 cents per CD. These small CDs won't work on a CD drive unless it has a center button—so most desktops don't work but the laptops will.

Of course, when you only need to print up a small quantity at a time, you have ready opportunity to update the image, bio, price or other information without additional expense.

See you next time.

Copyright © 2006 by Chris Saper.

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