How to Make Personal Business Cards

Personal business cards, on the other hand, are a different kettle of fish. Recently, there has been an emergence of individuals making personal business cards, for a variety of reasons, apart from just advertising their business.

Students on the lookout for jobs, people who want to change their profession, those having a side-business or planning to start one, and individuals who are just passionate about something and want to network with people having similar interests, use business cards. They are considered an important medium to effectively communicate one's identity.

Basically, these cards provide critical information about oneself, one's career and interests, and one's contact information.

Many a time, carrying your resume, which comprises information about yourself in loads of paper, becomes cumbersome. This is where personal cards comes in handy. Their main purpose is to communicate to a potential employer or a contact, your name, telephone number, mailing address, website address, and of course your occupation, interests and activities.

A good card is one that, along with giving all the information, also reflects the personality and qualifications of that person.

If you go to a commercial printer, he/she will show you different designs, from which you can choose the one you want. Charges for the whole process will be quite high, which may not fit into your budget. To avoid this, you can design your own business card with the help of certain software which are available on your personal computer.

One can use CorelDRAW, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator for creating business cards. All these software provide a variety of colors, font styles, graphics, etc., which help your card look great. You can personalize your card by adding your name, address, your photograph and company's logo. These software give specific instructions which you need to follow.

You can either make a simple card, or use the variety of features available to enhance it. To illustrate, if you are a wedding planner, you can choose a colorful background, with the picture of a bride and bridegroom. This will help the receiver understand your profession, as soon as he/she sees the card.

People coming from creative fields, like advertising or graphic designing, can make use of certain innovative ideas to design their cards. For instance, if one is in the field of animation, he/she can use some animated characters in order to make the business card look interesting.

However, creativity need not be limited only to people from creative fields, others can also think out of the box. If one desires, he/she can also give extra information on the rear side of the card, like qualifications, aims, job expectations, etc.

The creating and designing of a card is followed by the actual printing process. If you have a color printer at your home or office, you need not go to an external printer. Select the kind of paper or material that you would like to have for your business card. There are a variety of them available in the market.

But before you print the business card on the main paper, print it on a simple one. This will give you an idea of how the card is going to look, and would also help in making changes, if desired. After making the required changes, again take a printout on a rough paper, and only when you are satisfied with the whole thing, proceed to take the final printout.

A good personal business card is the first step to attract potential employers/clients/contacts. So, put on your thinking cap, and create something that is original and appealing.