Font Size on Business Cards

I’m in the process of designing a set of business cards for a client, I came across the difficult decision of what is the appropriate font size. I know I know. Different fonts at size 12 vary widely in overall real estate, but I’m speaking in general. Imagine the standard Arial font.

My designer friend (who’s opinions I trust cause he’s actually a designer, and I’m just a hobbyist) and I got into an interesting discussion when I showed him the draft. He says the text should always be legible, use size 10. But to me, legibility is a relative measurement. So then I thought about how Business Cards are intimidate objects. When you handle a business card, there’s a tendency to hold it closer than normal documents. While normal documents with 10 Arial font is fairly legible from the desk, business cards might benefit with a smaller font size. The person’s name should be in a bigger font, but the essential business info should be presented in size 8 or 9 font. Smaller means the audience has to hold it closer to the eye, thus examining it more closely.

So if you were giving out your business cards, wouldn’t you want the other person to hold it closer than some regular boring document?

So they can read it in a more intimate fashion?

Story in Heaven and Logos

A couple of books read in the past weeks:

90 Minutes in Heaven
by Don Piper
4/5

Don survives and shares his life-changing experience after having survived a horrendous car crash and was pronounced clinically dead for 90 minutes.  It’s an inspiring story that makes you think a little about why you’re on Earth.

Logo Design that Works
by Lisa Silver
5/5

I’ve been on a logo-inspiring mood lately so picked up this book from the Boston library network. This book gives roughly 40 great examples of logos ranging from classics to modern.

Logos and Logos

Before and After

A good friend of mine from Chicago send me an article entitled The Best and Worst Logo Remake over at aclevercookie.com that provides a number of wonderful before-and-after comparisons of famous logos from recent makeovers. The KFC logo is below.

Need some Inspiration?

I’ve on a bit of a logo-craze lately and picked up the book Logo Design The Works from the library. It’s quite a nice read. The author hand selects a wide variety of logos and goes into details about the motivation behind each logo. Good for a glance through for some inspiraation.

Moses to the Ting

Today marks the launch of my brand new homepage at mosesting.com.  I finally have a centralized place to point visitors and to keep a track of other websites.  The design philosophy behind the hompage is based on two rules:

1. Conversational - I want the language style on my homepage written to make visitors feel like they’re having a converation with me.
2. Simple - Just the bare essentials; nothing more and nothing less

Hope you like it.

WWAD?

What Would Apple Do?

Due to the universal recognition of the Apple iPod and the company’s incredibly design-savvy product line, a lot of people are asking the same question. Just this morning a friend of mine, Pete from datawrangling.com, emails me the following:

Had an idea for a blog post, you’re a design guy so maybe you could do a better job with it…

I was trying to put my spare tire back into my trunk last night, and it was a real pain getting it screwed in properly. So I thought to myself, how would Apple have made this differently? Heck, what if they design an entire car?

I’m flattered that Pete would refer me to a design guy because since I’m just a hobbyist. But I think Pete’s got a few interesting points there. iPod and the soon-to-be-out iPhone are both revolutionary devices. Apple takes an existing product type, the mp3 player or the typical cell phone, and revamp the whole thing through the integration of great UI, simplistic design, and smart marketing and branding.

So just What Would Apple Do differently with an ordinary thing like a car? An iCar. In the vehicle world, things have been dormant for the longest time. Sure, there’s focus on fuel efficiency, but what about the whole UI side of things? For example:

• Why can’t we have the ability to change a spare tire without any tools except for our bare hands?
• Can we reduce the number of buttons on the dash for controlling the hvac, radio, navigation system, etc…?
• There are separate pedals for acceleration (gas) and braking, can we change that?

If you have any other improvements, leave a comment because I’d love to hear about them.

Homepage

I’ve been trying to build a simple homepage for myself at mosesting.com, which is currently only a Django success page.

Sorry.

Things have been quite busy and I actually haven’t come up with anything creative. Then I came across the homepage of Amit Gupta today and I felt inspired. His homepage is simple and to the point, no extra fries on the side. It made me realize that in my initial thoughts about my own homepage, I was trying to “cramp” in too much info.  Seeing Amit’s work, I was once again reminded of a personal design philosophy:

Simple is key.