A business card is a small, printed, usually credit-card-sized paper card that holds your business details, such as name, contact details and brand logo. Your business card design is an essential part of your branding and should act as a visual extension of your brand design. There’s one other preliminary activity that makes the rest of the business card design process run more smoothly. You need to know what you want to communicate. Once you have your logo, brand color scheme, and a good idea of what you want your card to say about you, you’re ready to start. Just follow the 8 steps below to determine which business card design would work best for you.If you’ve already decided on a traditional rectangular business card, you can skip ahead to the second step. If, however, you want to learn about all your options, even outside-the-box strategies, keep reading. As printing techniques grow more advanced and affordable, professionals have more room to explore alternative shapes. The printing technique of die-cutting allows you to cut out any shape you want and still print in bulk. You can even build your entire business card theme around clever cutting. Cireson’s business card design uses shape to really highlight the employee picture, giving them a more personable and therefore approachable feel. Whether or not to use creative shapes depends on the image you want to convey. Special shapes make you seem more fun and help you make an impression, but can have an adverse effect on more formal industries. You’ll also want to keep in mind logistics, such as how the card fits in a wallet. Your next decision is the size of the card. This mostly depends on the standard of the country, so that’s a good place to start. Even if you plan to stand out, you have to know what everyone else is doing to go against it. North American Standard: 3.5 × 2 in. (88.9 × 50.8 mm) Bleed area: the outermost part of the card likely to be removed. This is just