OpenDesigns – Case Study in Funky Business Cards

I got the chance to design some very funky business cards when Betsy with Michigan based  OpenDesign came to me to design unique business cards for her and her up and coming interior design business.  Betsy’s tagline is “The Smiling Eclectic Designer”, and it suits her to a tea.  Fun, energized and anything but stodgy, Betsy wanted cards that represented her… definitely different, and definitely not corporate.

She had developed a swirly graphic, sorta yin yang, sorta stylized woman, and had been using that as a logo of sorts.  She also had a photograph of herself, somewhat out of focus and generally soft with flowers in the background.  We decided on a two sided card, with the photo on one side and most of the business information on the other. 

For the photo side, I added an earthy gradient to the photo to leave room for some text and also to allow the image to take up the entire area of the card.  For the other side, I took her swirly graphic (a low res bitmap), redrew it as a vector file and then colored it in four earthy yet funky color versions.  These four swirls were strategically placed in the background of the card so as not to compete too much with the text, but so that they also definitely stand out.  I then added her company information and other tagline of “life is too short for white walls”.  She was thrilled with the results, which capture her style and creativity with a card that is far from just another business card.