Eye-Catching Business Card Ideas

By: Kaitlyn Miller


There are many basics to designing custom business cards. But what about getting beyond the basics? Here are some more-daring business card design ideas for you to consider when trying to come up with your own cool design.

Scratch-off business cards. Yep, that’s right, scratch-off, like scratch-off lottery tickets. The silver scratch-off material hides your contact information. This works with a plain design, say a white business card with a silver image of something that pertains to your business. So if you run a coffee shop, you could have a silver image of a coffee mug that the reader must scratch off to see your contact info under the image. Will people want to work that hard to see your info? I’ll bet that they will!

Make it a mini-map. If you have the money for color business cards, it could be a good idea to turn your business card into a fold-out map. When the map is folded into business card size, only your contact information is displayed. Once you unfold it, you can have directions to your business laid on a map or just an “X” or star where your business is located on the map. This will take a bit more money, so make sure your business card printing budget can handle it!

Make it tactile. I’ve seen a custom business card that was customized in the coolest way – a farm that raises sheep had some wool attached to its business card! The card had a picture of a sheep on it, and the sheep was fluffy!

Make your business card pop. Remember pop-up books? The books you read when you were little that used the spine of the book to make a character pop up at you? You can use this in your business card printing strategy by having a card that folds in half into the size of a regular business card. When you open the card, attached close to both sides of the fold can be an image cutout related to your business. One great example is a carpenter’s business card that had a chair cutout attached to the sides of the spine so that when the card was opened, the chair was “sitting” straight up.

Add some texture. This relates back to making it tactile. Instead of adding wool or attaching something to the card, use the card material itself. You can use embossing or engraving to produce an image or text into your business card. For instance, a dentist’s card I saw used an embossment of a set of teeth (like what you would see on a dentist’s chart – the top of the teeth). It gave the card texture that really related well to the profession.

Use metallic text. Another eye-catching way to make your color business cards pop is to use metallic text. Metallic colors really make your text stand out.

Use fabric. If you work in a field that uses different fabrics in any way – say a clothing designer, or a tailoring business – use the material of your trade for your business card! Just make sure it has some cardboard or something in the base that will keep it from being limp. One clothing company used what looked and felt like brown suede material with a different colored thread running through it for the design. Keep in mind that you can choose from many fake types of material if needed – fake suede, fake leather … you get the drift. This doesn’t have to be that expensive.

Make it look like something else. A perfume shop could use a long, thin business card that looks like a scent tester. If you have a video store or do something in film, you could use a card that looks like a movie ticket stub.

For more information, you can visit this page on business card printing and custom business cards