© dbking

Is your brand outstanding or just standing out in the cold?

A business‘ full visual identity is what sets it apart from its competitors. With a landscape full of copycats, fakes and mundane bussinessmen, it’s your duty as an exceptional entrepreneur to set yourself apart from the rest. Getting an amazing business card is only one part of the equation. Receiving multiple business cards from different people at the same company is when you realize a brand is truly special. Here’s why your brand is sucking at making a lasting impression.

Your Clever Design Is Just A Gimmick

Admit it, you’re a clever thing, just like everyone else. “You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.” ~Fight Club. If you have no reason behind making a business card and visual identity that stand out then you shouldn’t be creating something like it with carefree abandon.

What you should be focusing on is how your visual identity reflects the core values of your brand. If you can’t accurately depict a visual translation then focus on something that is useful as well as descriptive:

If you are anyone who deals primarily in the digital space for your work you may want to reconsider a USB for a business card. If you’re ANYONE with a resume you may want to use this instead of a traditional paper card. Why? It acts as a call to action. People are naturally curious, plus it acts as a gift. Recipients of this will be hard pressed not to open up any file that is contained within your business card, portfolio or otherwise.

Your Clever Designs Are Cleverly Designed. The Gimmick? Designs, Plural.

Two brilliant personalized business visual identities that keep their brand cohesion but alter their graphics slightly to individualize their representation are from SEED Media Group and Carrot Creative. You would think that this would be a no-brainer with an amazingly designed product/media company and a design firm, but alas, these are the exception, NOT the rule. Much kudos goes out to both companies from standing out in the crowd.

SEED Media Group

Sagmeister Inc. studio.

Carrot Creative is the epitome of personalizing a brand to an individual. There is consistency with the flat colors, the same green used in the background, the same vector-based cartoons in the same style. Once you are familiar with one of their identities you are intrigued to find out who else works for them and WANT to see & collect the other business cards. Of course no one really looks like a cartoon but each avatar gives a little bit of their personality.

The overall visual identity conveys a sense of fun and amusement. You GET the feeling of what it would be like to work and do business with Carrot Creative JUST FROM looking at their card. THAT’S the ultimate coup- to convey your brand identity and core values emotionally in your visuals. It’s one thing to personalize your brand; it’s another to send your core message without telling someone what it is.

Carrot Creative gets an A. No A+ because there are some inconsistencies with their branding overall- Twitter backgrounds are not the same across all official Carrot accounts, avatars are not synced from their website to Twitter i.e. the sunburst pattern is on website & plain green is on Twitter. Besides these transitional elements (because I’m sure they’re just updating their brilliant visual identity) their image is spot on. You can see more of their visual identity and get a wider sense of each of their personalities on their Carrot Blog.

Your Clever Designs + Gimmicks = Your CleverlyDesigned Gimmicks

Still can’t think of any examples for you and your company? Trading cards or puzzle pieces are just two examples not represented above. Get out a pad and pencil. Start brainstorming. Think of sets.

Group things together. The main group represents your company and the individuals that make up the set represent the individuals that make up your business. See how that works? With a little thought process and ingenuity a commonplace creative business card can become an exciting part of a beautiful visual identity. With this in mind, how can you invigorate your brand?

Your Clever Designs Are Gimmicks That Work Well… Together

In order to truly have a HUGE presence with your visual identity I can not stress enough that it’s extremely important to personalize your brand to each individual. Why does this matter? Everyone receives- yet another- business card everyday from some random faceless person to be added to “the pile”. Some are boring, some are exciting, but the ones that are TRULY COVETABLE are the ones that form a series when you collect them.

By nature, people LOVE to collect. All sorts of things even.

Would you rather have 5 of the seemingly same business cards with different words on it OR 5 similar business cards that are visually a little different based on the person and their personality?

All images sourced from Reencoded, here and here, unless otherwise noted.