Let me start out by saying that I absolutely hate and despise designing for print! Secondly I wasn't sure where to post this so I put it in here, if it's in the wrong place I apologise! Anyway one of my units this year at uni has me creating a CV, portfolio, business card, letter headed paper etc. I've been working on a business card using my existing portfolio as a base.

 

I have three designs, two of which are supposed to be printed on a CD business card (hence the hole in the middle) and one of which is just a standard card. I'd like a bit of feedback on them as my lecturer isn't giving me any (more on that later).

 

 

My lecturers advice this morning was to forget about this module, get a bad mark and focus on the other ones! It's ridiculous! I wouldn't mind if I was necessarily bad at this module but I'm not, he's teaching another course this year and seems to have forgotten about the third years on his existing course, he's never on time if he shows up at all .

 

The images are a little on the large side as they're 300 DPI by the way, colours might be a little off as I'm also using CYMK.

I really like them, might be worth a punt at joining a forum like ukbusinessforums.co.uk and asking if any printers on there would do a sample of each one so you can see if you have made them correctly. Am sure a few would do it for free and even help you get the correct sizes bleed areas and everything else that is required plus maybe even do it for free if you mention your a student etc.

Is it the design itself or the technical setup that you're concerned with?

Is it the design itself or the technical setup that you're concerned with?

 

The design.

 

Thanks for the advice TH, I'll have a ganders at the forum later today.

Just quick notes (gotta head out in a bit)..

 

Top - It comes across as very basic. If I were the tutor, I'd want to hear the reasoning behind some of it, like the 'n' running into the 'd', the inverted contact details and so on (not saying you haven't got any reason there). There's not a lot of alignment going on except for where you have the contact details.. there's nothing connecting the different elements. Kerning hasn't been done.

 

Middle - Probably the best out of the three. I'm not keen on the upside-down bits on the other cards as I don't see a reason to make someone turn the card round. If there were a conceptual reason why it's like that, you could probably justify it though. Again, seems a bit basic, though. Not sure about the thing coming off the 'b'.. again, I don't see a reason for it, but on the other hand it's adding a bit of visual interest to an otherwise basic design.

 

Bottom - pretty much the same criticisms as the top one.

 

Overall - Imagining I was the tutor, I would question whether you're really pushing yourself with these designs. They're functional in that the required information is there, but they're just not very interesting. The bits that do add visual interest (like the bar coming from the 'b', the dark glow etc) come across (to me, anyway) as being there to distract from the fact that it's essentially very basic.

 

sidenote - careful using orange when printing in cmyk. Often comes out less bright than needed ('cos of the blue element involved mixing the colours)

TBH, I don't think you will find a printer who will run up a sample for free (purely because of the costs involved - ie plates and inks)

 

From a design, view, I prefer the middle one. - Not really a fan of the upside down part.