Patricia C. Vener - New Business Card Design

by Patricia C. Vener
(Hamden, CT)

My new business card design came about because of two distinct impeti (impetuses just seems wrong).

The first of these is that I redesigned my website. My cards were originally designed to reflect my old website design and so clearly they also needed to be redesigned.

My new website design is CSS driven and very sleek on a dark background (which the viewer can change to light background by choosing the alternate Style via their web browser), but I don't want to use up all my ink and worry about registering the design on the card stock.

At the same time there was the second influence - David Weiman's advice to keep one's card simple. Simple and elegant are very well matched!

This got me past my first feeble design modification of simply exchanging the existing background to the darker tone of my website to what you see in the image above.

The eye sweeps in a curve from upper left to lower right - a design element I learned from an old photography book (possible by Steichen) in my father's collection.

I show off my talents with two images; a watercolor that I really must raise the price on before it gets sold (I love this painting!) and a picture of one of my more flamboyant necklaces that can be swapped with a different flamboyant necklace.

The centerpiece is my name in the same set of fonts that top my website and, of course, my Silver Dragon logo remains as a reminder of the name Silver Dragon Creations - which itself does not appear on the card.

My basic contact information appears along with the URL to my website. Everything else, my eNewsletter, my online market shops, my facebook Page, twitter and blog can all be reached from my website.

On the back of the card I stuffed those and a version of my Artist's Statement but this results in tiny font so I will be removing the links, enlarging the Artist Statement font - voila! - my cards represent me.

I used PhotoImpact 8 to create the graphics from scanned images of my watercolor and photographed and scanned pieces of jewelry. It's an excellent graphics software and I do all my digital art with it. At only $80 dollars and with functionality similar to the much higher priced Photoshop, it has turned out to be an exceptional purchase for me.

If you have questions, I'm more than happy to try to answer them.

It's not work when you love what you do.

Patricia Vener
Patricia C. Vener
Patricia C. Vener's blog
Patricia Vener's Silver Dragon Facebook fan page
Silver Dragon 1000 Markets shop
Silver Dragon Etsy shop