Business Card WIP

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rrkradio

Hi,
i am going to complete this business card made for an italian holiday farm. Scribus 1.5.2 only.  Comments and criticism are welcome

In the following days will start to design a brochure for the same farm.. let you show something when ready  :)

Roby

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GarryP

Welcome to the forum rrkradio.

I have a few comments and suggestions but feel free to ignore any or all of them.

First, have a chat with your print shop about bleeds and how the cards will be printed and cut. Then make sure your document is set-up as the print shop suggests. This will make things much easier when you come to getting the cards - and the brochures - printed.

Next, following on from my first point, I would generally advise against putting a border on a business card (as can be seen on the front of your example). Unless the printing and cutting will be absolutely accurate (not impossible but may be expensive) you may find that part of the border is larger than other parts or it may even be crooked. If in doubt, don't line things up against the edge of the card as you can't be sure exactly where the finished edge will be. Even one millimetre can make a big difference on something as small as a business card.

My next suggestion would be to not obscure the image as much as you have done with the semi-transparent overlays. If you have a nice image then why not show it off?

Removing the overlays however would make the logo+text area difficult to see. What I would suggest in this case would be to isolate the logo+text onto its own "panel" either to the right, bottom or centre of the card. Fill this panel with a single colour and make sure the text has good contrast. (I've attached a very crude sample of the sort of thing but you don't need to go down the same lines.)

I like the choice of typeface(s) but I'm not sure about the use of old style numerics - the ones that drop below the baseline (3,4,5,etc). Old style numerics have their place, but for things like phone numbers they can be a bit distracting. It's a totally personal choice but if it was me I would look to see if the font included modern numerics also and use them instead. (I don't think Scribus caters for multiple numeric types so you may have to insert the characters manually, or maybe 1.5.x does things differently.)

On the back, there seems to be quite a large space to the left of the information. Left-aligning the top two lines of text in each block might look better (or it might not in the case of the second block down). Or, you could take the left-hand edge of each rectangle to the edge of the bleed, then stagger each rectangle down the card with each one getting larger. (Again, see my very crude attached example - I didn't bother using different colours or adding the text.) Notice that, in this case, if the cutting is a bit out it won't make too much difference.

I like your colour choices by the way. They go well with the subject matter and continue the theme from the logo.

In all I think you've made a great start but there are some issues - as I've mentioned above - that may need more thinking about.

Business cards are very difficult to get right. Such a small area to put over the right message. As I said at the start, please feel free to totally ignore anything or everything that I've said. Some of it - bleeds etc. - is important, while on the other hand, some of it is purely a personal preference. You need to go with what the customer wants and my opinions are no match to that.

Anyway, I hope I've been able to give you some reasonably sensible and useful advice. Please don't hesitate to ask for clarification on anything I've not explained well enough.

P.S. On the image you supplied the white border at the bottom-right is slightly thicker than the border at the top-right. I don't know if this is just an artefact of how your got the image but it does tie back in to what I was saying about bleeds.

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a.l.e

ciao roby

welcome to this forum...

... and i think that i need some holidays!

: - )

nice business card!... here is my criticism:

personally, the front part is too centered for my taste. there is some sort of concentric shapes effect that is not enough psychedelic to be effective...

on the back side, i like the the colors you have picked, but i miss a hierarchy in the information...

there are four products, an address, a phone number and an url... some of them are a title, some not.
three tones of green and two of orange... two of the greens are for the product and one for the contact information.


and i wonder if in italy it's so common to use the coordinates to find a place... typing the address in google maps seems to work well (and thee coordinates do match the ones you are.

keep up with the good work!
ciao
a.l.e

rrkradio

#3
Hi GarryP,
tnx a lot for your precise detailed reply with example included !!!!!.

First of all: TNX AGAIN. I appreciate your help and point of view!

The image uploaded is without bleed and the transparent area is 2mm wider for each side. Therefore no problem with the printshop. (by the way ... they have really good equipments because the cutting is always near the perfection).  They allow pdf/x-4 and i decided to try the transparent layer 50%. Your suggestion for the front (remove half transparent, etc) of course works.

What you see is a sum of two screenshots and may be i drew the rectangle around the window not perfectly. The original pages are aligned and have the same transparent border (5mm total,  bleed included)

I agree with you about the typeface with old style numeric that drops below the baseline. Will change it (and propose the improvement to my customer). I like the idea to change the lenght of the colored rectangles. Will try. Thanks a lot.

Already said ?  THANKS

roby


PS: Sorry for my written english

rrkradio

Hi a.l.e,

thanks for your reply. Good idea to limit the colours (one for products and another for info, url, address...). Will think and try :-)

Customer asked me to put in the gps coordinates. (generally i avoid them on business cards).

Appreciate your help,
roby

a.l.e

(well, i'm not sure you should limit the colors, but if you multiple tones of two different colors, the ones with the same type of information should IMO also have the same base color...)

GarryP

You're welcome Roby.

I didn't know if you knew about bleeds - when people join the forum we don't know their history - so I thought I would offer the information just in case. It's good to know you're on top of things.

I thought the image you supplied might have been created from other things but I thought I'd mention the border in case you had not noticed it. It's something that's easily missed and an expensive thing to fix once printed. So it's good that it's not an issue.

If you are using the Raleway font - which it looks like you are doing - then I think it contains modern numerics so you might not have to change the font, just change to different numeric glyphs (using insert character). Other fonts have this too so it's worth checking before changing font.

Just one more thing: a.l.e mentioned that you're giving the coordinates on the back of the card. Have you, or your customer, thought about using http://what3words.com/ ? It gives potential customers an easy way of navigating to a location.

rrkradio

Yes right.... agree with you.

Tnx,
roby

Quote from: a.l.e on October 19, 2016, 03:25:40 PM
(well, i'm not sure you should limit the colors, but if you multiple tones of two different colors, the ones with the same type of information should IMO also have the same base color...)

rrkradio

GarryP,

yes the font is the Raleway (woooow .. do you use it ? or have you  an abnormal deep knowledge of fonts ?  ;D) Tnx for the info about the availability of numeric glyphs in the extended character set.

But... i didn't know (shame on me) nothing about what3words.com. It seems really interesting!!

Will work on the business card tomorrow  :)

Roby

Quote from: GarryP on October 19, 2016, 03:29:48 PM
You're welcome Roby.
.....

If you are using the Raleway font - which it looks like you are doing - then I think it contains modern numerics so you might not have to change the font, just change to different numeric glyphs (using insert character). Other fonts have this too so it's worth checking before changing font.

Just one more thing: a.l.e mentioned that you're giving the coordinates on the back of the card. Have you, or your customer, thought about using http://what3words.com/ ? It gives potential customers an easy way of navigating to a location.

GarryP

Unfortunately no superpowers were used in the identification of the font. I remember the "w" glyph - like two sets of railway tracks converging - from something I was working on a while ago.

Having said that, "Font Identification" might be a weak superpower to have but if it's all that's going then I'll take it!

I actually think that the "W"s spoil the font. I think it would be a better general-purpose font with "normal" "W"s. The strange glyphs aren't good for people with, for example, dyslexia where it can look like two "V"s together which can be confusing.

rrkradio

I like this weak superpower ;-)

Interesting your thought about the strange glyphs related to people with reading problems. I have buyed some fonts in the past but now with Google Fonts and other "providers" there is endless choice.

Sorry for O.T.: Speaking of fonts, i realised that Scribus, when exports to .pdf,  outlines (all?) commercial fonts that i purchased. The same fonts are embedded in the pdf under Win or Mac OS (e.g. using Affinity Designer). I am sure that it's a "license problem". Do you know something more? Any workaround ?  (Of course i send to the printshop the outlined font in a separate file if needed)

Enjoy your day,
roby

Quote from: GarryP on October 20, 2016, 01:56:31 PM
....
Having said that, "Font Identification" might be a weak superpower to have but if it's all that's going then I'll take it!

I actually think that the "W"s spoil the font. I think it would be a better general-purpose font with "normal" "W"s. The strange glyphs aren't good for people with, for example, dyslexia where it can look like two "V"s together which can be confusing.

a.l.e

embedding: probably not a licensing issue.

but those fonts are probably otf fonts and scribus does not embed them in a pdf.

but they normally should be subset and not outlined iirc...

except if the fonts ask for not being embedded... (then it would be a licensing issue... but, then, i wonder why other software embed them...)

mmm....

rrkradio

Hi a.l.e,
tnx for your reply and sorry for my huge delay.

I double checked and the "problematic" behaviour is with .OTF only fonts. Now i have a linux only laptop, but in the following days i'll check the exported pdf (made with scribus pdf/X-3) with Distiller on Mac OSX to understand something more.

With .ttf fonts (commercial or not) everything is perfect  :)

Roby


Quote from: a.l.e on October 21, 2016, 04:06:16 PM
embedding: probably not a licensing issue.

but those fonts are probably otf fonts and scribus does not embed them in a pdf.

but they normally should be subset and not outlined iirc...

except if the fonts ask for not being embedded... (then it would be a licensing issue... but, then, i wonder why other software embed them...)

mmm....