Green Business Networks: May 2008 Archives

The business card—many of us use it more than any other single marketing item, yet it very often demonstrates the least marketing smarts.

Ideabook is a treasure chest of design and business ideas.  This tip for business card redesign ideas fits well into the green thinking stream, as well as general business.  "High performance" is at the heart of green design.  If you can make the simple business card work more effectively, you will need fewer of them, waste less paper, and improve your time management!

Even though design is a creative exercise, it is fraught with formula thinking—a newsletter is 8 1/2 by 11 inches, a brochure has a headline on the cover, text in the middle and a logo on the back, and a business card is 3 1/2 by 2 inches, printed on one side using a boilerplate layout and the usual information. Jolt thinking is the opposite of formula thinking. It challenges you to examine your mission, strategy, and execution of a project. How? By answering three basic questions: What is the purpose? Why is it done the way it's done? And how can I do it most effectively?

INFORMATION CARD One of the “whys” of business cards is to get folks to hold onto it until they need it. And one way to increase the chance of having it saved is to incorporate information your prospect might refer to from time to time. Charts, graphs, calendars, green tips, sources for information...etc.