So I wanted to update this post with the card design the client picked out.  He decided he wanted to use a lime green so blacklights would highlight it when he hands his card out at a dj event (I guess there’s always a blacklight on at all times?)  I actually like it green, don’t you?  Out of all the designs, he actually picked the one I was sure he wouldn’t like because it had so much going on in the background… Well, whatever floats your boat!  This card really does look awesome in print, it has a high uv gloss coating over all the color and it’s just slick and pretty!

——–end of update———-

I haven’t posted any business cards in a while, so I thought I would share my most recent project proofs.  I’m pretty sure these folks went to vistaprint and were not satisfied based on the sample I saw and the whole “we need awesome cards fast” request.  I can’t say this enough, “YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR”.  There is no such thing as “free business cards”, because you pay for the shipping… and then you pay a REAL print shop to make you better ones in about 2 weeks when you get sick of looking at the cards you thought you could design yourself using a crappy flash based design generator.  C’mon people, seriously… quit supporting the corporate internet monsters and go to your LOCAL printer!

Whoa, enough ranting…

Back to the project:  So we know the client likes illustrations and line art (or vector art in designer’s lingo).  I wanted to give him something more than the lame template he picked from vistaprint (bastards)… so i mixed up 3 and 4 vectors from vecteezy, manipulated some of them so the highlights and good parts of the background would “caress” the text (like in #1 & #2 in the proof shown).  I used a rainbow gradient in a rectangle to cover the whole design & set it to “multiply” on the transparency palette.  I got kinda carried away with the different tweaks to each design, hence there being 2 similar in a couple of the choices.  In design #3, I found that vector of the turntable with the record, there was different text on the record, so I thought it would be cool to use the client’s name on the record instead.  A simple tweak to some text– I opened the vector file from vecteezy in illustrator, got rid of the stock text on the record, then put in my own.  I had to convert it to outlines, skew it and do some rotating to make it sit just right.  I only just emailed these proofs yesterday, but I will tell you #1 & #6 are my favorites.

This project was pretty fun for me because I don’t use photoshop for creation as much as i could.  I found some fun brushes on brusheezy.com for wood and made my own boards and posts. I drew the little screws in photoshop too… pretty easy with a gradient fill, then an emboss to make it look sunk into the board.  I used a technique with several steps to burn the logo into the wood, too.  Then I saved those images as tiff files and did the rest in inDesign.  The “Pig Xing” sign is an actual photo from the ranch, so playing on that I drew the sign for the name, phone # & web address using just the rounded corner effect on a rectangle from inDesign.  The background is a 3D rendering I downloaded (can’t remember where from).  I actually designed this business card after I did the elaborate brochure (below).

When I did my brainstorming on what I wanted this brochure to look like, I kept thinking “outdoors” but “clean”.  I think the background image really lends itself to that idea with the blue sky and all… Again, in photoshop I made a separate file for my little screws so I could place them in the layout using inDesign.  (click on the brochure image to see it larger – those screws were so freakin’ easy!)

I wanted all the photos of the hunters to look like they had been posted on a wooden pole with the screws kinda like drying freshly developed photos (old school).  Repetition of the boards at the top for the titles reinforced the theme of the wood, and just to be different, I drew scotch tape (in inDesign) and taped my little “note” in the middle of the brochure.  I probably spent about 3 to 4 hours on this project, and the client was so surprised with the design.  He said he didn’t expect something so unique!

Palo Cedro Barber's Biz Cards: Old vs. New

These nice folks asked me to “reproduce” their business cards because they had run out.  I love redesigning old stuff that’s so generic it’s sickening.  The old design probably came from a template at office depot or something.  Soooo obvious what to do…  Give these old school barbers a fresh look, but keep it clean.  I put together a reproduction of their old one, along with the new surprise design (yeah guess which one they picked haha). They went with digital business cards, and I had them ready the next day.  Clean and simple just like their old card, with a little more color.  By the way, this barber pole was a freebie I found on vecteezy a long time ago… not sure if it’s still there (see my favorite places links).