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Doing the Biz Card Squeeze
Are you tired of squinting to read the tiny print on business cards these days? Because most businesses -- even small businesses -- have multiple phone numbers, email addresses, and web addresses that need to go on a business card, the squeeze is on! But unless your target market is strictly those with 20/20 vision, be careful not to sacrifice legibility. There's a huge group of consumers over the age of 30, and unfortunately, more and more of us need longer arms, or bigger, more legible type.
Whether you hire a professional graphic designer to create your business cards, or design them yourself to print out on your LaserJet or DeskJet printer, or at a professional print shop, you will need to decide how to make all the important information about yourself and your business fit, without requiring a magnifying glass to read it.
Choose the Right Typeface for Legibility
The key to squeezing all the information on your business card and keeping it legible is not only to choose the right type size, but also the right type style.
Many fonts are more legible than others. For example, serif and sans serif fonts vary a great deal in legibility. The business card shown here on the left uses a serif font (a serif is the line or curl at the end of the letter). The street address is in 11 point type. The card on the right uses a sans serif font (no lines or curls), and the street address is even smaller, 9.5 points, but it is more legible. That's because this font, Futura, is a very clean, easy-to-read font. It's not very decorative or distinctive, but if legibility is your main concern, you may have to sacrifice distinctiveness.
Tracking Helps with the Squeeze
Another trick of the trade is tracking. It allows you to squeeze all your text onto one line without having to go to a smaller point size. Tracking refers to the space between the letters. If you are stuck with a word that just won't squeeze into the space you've given it, try tracking all the letters back, rather than shrinking them down another half a point. In the example below, the letters were tracked back to fit on one line.
You can adjust the tracking of your letters in both QuarkXPress and Adobe Pagemaker. Even recent versions of Microsoft Word and most other popular word processing programs allow you to adjust the tracking (sometimes referred to as "spacing") of your letters.
For more on choosing a typeface, see these Remember Me articles on ice:
Using Symbol Fonts for Easy Graphic Design
What Type Are You? Choosing a Typeface for Your Logo
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