OUGD505 - Design Production 2: Studio Brief 2 - Business Cards

I started on the stationary for the branding with the business cards.

Content
I obviously wanted the information to be realistic, so I looked into what numbers cruise lines use.

Number
These cruise lines use an 0844 or 0843 number, so I made one up: 0843 418 4269

Address
I needed an address that people could send letters too and a head office it would operate from.
P&O cruises have their head office at the Carnival House in Southampton so I decided to use the same one as there are multiple businesses in the office. It is also ideal being in Southampton as that is where all the boats depart from.

Twitter
The twitter handle would be @mediterraneanvoyages to keep it consistent with everything else, and have people find it easily.

Email
I decided the email should be info@mediterraneanvoyages.co.uk. This is professional and other words instead of info could be used like a staff member's name or for different kinds of contact like reservations or dining.

Website
The website would be www.mediterraneanvoyages.co.uk. Keeps it simple, to the point and it is what most people would search for when looking for the company so keeps it easy to understand. I had .co.uk as it is an English company.

I did think about having .cruise as the domain name as it comes out in 5 days, but I thought it might confuse people.

Design

The back of it is kept simple with the logo and illustration.

Front

I tried a few different layouts for the front to see what worked best. As it has an address on it, it takes up quite a lot of space. First I tried having two columns for the information, left aligned. I wrote the address traditionally on separate lines.

Then I decided to put the address over two lines which I liked a lot better. I had all the information stacked above each other which I think worked well.

I tried it on the right hand side to spread out the information, but I don't think layout works for a more corporate brand.

I then tried a central layout but I didn't think this flowed easily.

Then I tried having two columns for the smaller information and I think this works well as it is quite spread out.

I again tried a central layout with more elaborate headings, but I felt this was too messy.

This was the layout I have decided to go for in the end. I made all the spacing between everything was 2mm, and made sure the info at the bottom was parallel to where the water started on the opposite side.

Printing

I was thinking of getting them printed as well, so that they could have a double-sided matt lamination. This would give a smooth, professional finish if I had the lamination. I wanted to get it from printed.com as I have ordered from them before and they had great service and exactly what I asked for.

I thought I could get the loyalty cards printed at the same time because then I could save money and I want them all to have the same finishes. If I get five of each, then it would come to £15 which isn't bad at all.