Business Card Format and Grid

On the basis that it's important that my business card isn't going end up as plain white with black text and a picture of a fish in the corner, I planned out a layout to make sure that is related to the concept.

I decided that I'd use the golden ratio for my grid, as a more rigid square grid doesn't fit with the connotations of fish. At the same time, the idea that the golden ratio is meant to be the most visually pleasing proportion is a good way to represent a graphic designer.

The above shows what my business card will be in its most basic form, this is its starting point. Since my talk with John a while ago I've still had very few thoughts on what should go beneath my name, so I just decided that Graphic Designer is probably the best thing to put. This annoyed me though, so I decided to add the line "But I like fish too" as a way of distracting myself from this whilst not doing anything that wouldn't make it immediately obvious that I do graphic design.

Seeing this and thinking about the idea of a background, middle-ground and foreground, I thought about being able to do some folding within my business card, shown below.

This is roughly how it would look from the front, with there being a fold that gives a separate section for the three rows of the card.

On the back of the card there could be some sort of vector image of a plant as a way of making sure that's the back of the card to avoid any confusions like my housemate and I did with the evolution print business card.

Looking at it from above really creates the background, middle-ground and foreground, and due to the way the paper is folded, there are some plain areas that are hidden when you look at it from the front. These areas are good for having some sort of images of fish in, as it allows me to use images of fish but in a less obvious way, as well as having a creative reference to the idea of giving fish more room to swim in.















I really liked this idea, and it's something I want to take forward, so I've created another document with a grid that takes the folds into account, and this is what I'll be working on.