© FunnyBiz

Business card designs should pass what is known as the "trash test", which means that it will not ultimately get tossed into the trash or filed away. The size of your business card should be a standard 3.5 x 2 inches so that it will fit into wallets and card holders with ease.

Anything larger is likely to end up in the trash. You should invest in quality paper to project a professional image with your business card. Cheap cards are more likely to get trashed. You can test the ink quality of your current business card by dropping so me liquid on the card. If the ink runs, it's safe to say it will end up in the trash. The use of color on business cards is a tricky issue. While colorful cards can help you stand out, too much color can detract from your image.

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Business card designs can help you to express the core theme of your business and make a lasting impression on clients. For those companies that have multi faceted businesses, it can be tough to sum up what they do in such a small space.

However, one Hollywood makeup artist has found a creative way to do just that. She works in TV, film and fashion and so she often does makeup to make celebrities look beautiful as well as makeup work to create movie monsters and zombies for films like Flight of the Living Dead. She hired a graphic designer to create a card which reflected this dualistic nature of her work, and the result was a card which showed a monster on one half and a beautiful woman on the other. She had pertinent contact details like name, phone, website and email displayed on a center strip.

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Choosing the right layout for business card designs can be tricky, considering that a lot of details have to be crammed into a very small space. Designers have come up with some very creative solutions to this challenge, and there are a variety of design templates which can be found online to help you organize all your information in the most effective format.

Which format you select ultimately comes down to the amount of information you need to display and the size of the graphics you want to include. For companies that do business internationally, it's important to note that standard business card sizes are different in the US, Europe and Japan. You should be sure to print your business cards using 300 dpi resolution for the best quality image.