We started by researching our organizations to better understand their mission statement, attitudes and competitors. We then created Pinterest inspiration and mood boards to help get our creative juices flowing. I found myself spending way to much time on Pinterest finding the most unique and interesting business card designs. This definitely helped me get started on this project.

We were then asked to create a rough draft of our business card in Adobe InDesign. After setting up my paper space I was then faced with “staring at a blank screen” syndrome. I felt a little overwhelmed, but then I remembered all the great ideas I found on Pinterest. I went back to my boards and started taking elements from some of my favorite designs. I started by choosing my color scheme. I wanted to use bold and inviting colors and thankfully CAC uses blue, white and yellow in all of their designs. I wanted my business card to feel inviting and fun, but also informative. I wanted it to motivate students to want to learn more about the organization and hopefully make them want to come visit “my office”.

When first assigned this project I thought we would be designing business cards for ourselves. I was excited to create my own design that represented me. I think it was a challenge to create a business card for another organization because it isn’t something we are as familiar with. This exercise forced me to think beyond just what looks good and to really think about the meaning of every element of design.

This is what I have come up with so far. I definitely want to play around with it more, but I am proud of my design thus far. Although I was overwhelmed by a blank page at first taking the time to break down the elements of design definitely helped me. As I have said before, design is all about trial and error. Adding things, taking things away, moving things around… eventually you will get it to be just perfect!