*Deep Breath*
I’ll be brutally honest, I didn’t know if I was going to make it to this point or not.
When we first started downloading Adobe Creative Suite, my actual reaction was
And then when we got the business card and letterhead assignment back-to-back it turned into
In short, I freaked out.
After I gathered myself, I cranked out the following (very rough) rough draft of a business card.
I think this really showcases how nervous I was to use the tools we were being asked to use. I had no idea what I wanted to do with this design, but looking back at it, man was it horrible.
So I decided to change things up a bit. I closed my laptop, and started sketching things out. None of these sketches are perfect, but it really helped in the grand scheme of things and I really wish that I would’ve done this before I tried jumping into the actual design aspect.
I knew that I wanted to keep the ESPN logo front and center. I wanted people to know that I represent my company proudly and I felt as if my card needed to reflect that.
Next, I had to decide what I wanted to put on the back of my card. At first, I thought I would go with something like this:
The only problem with that was it made my card out to be very bland. While I wanted something simple, I didn’t want the card to look like garbage before we even got to the main part of it.
So I went back to the drawing board.
I have a question,
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear “ESPN”?
To me, it’s SportsCenter. SportsCenter is ESPN’s flagship show. Even non sports fans are aware of this truth.
It is because of that, that I decided to put the logo directly on the back of the card. SportsCenter is ESPN’s lifeline and not including it on the card felt very wrong. I also would love to work on SportsCenter one day, so that was more of a personal touch than anything.
Next, we got to the front of the card. Above, you’ll notice that I had ESPN going across the whole entire card. I scrapped that because it felt like it was too much. There wasn’t enough space for me to have such a large logo and then cram all of my contact info in there in a way that felt not only legible, but presentable, too.
So, I went with putting ESPN strictly on the left side of the card. It gives the logo one whole half of the card to work with, without sacrificing anything from a design standpoint. The right half was dedicated to my name and contact information.
This is my final business card:
I found the letterhead to be much, much easier than my business card. In short, I took the same route with wanting to keep ESPN front and center, and have any extra information to be simply that; extra.
Here is my rough letterhead:
And here is the final one:
All in all, I’m really excited with how all of this turned out. The more and more I work with Indesign, the more and more comfortable I become with it!
