However, you must be careful to follow certain standards when it comes to your business card design, especially in the area of text size. You have probably seen a business card that features abnormally large text, which makes it look amateur and unprofessional. At the same time, text that is too small can make your card appear cheap or dull, or even downright hard to read. We are going to point out some standards that you should stick to, along with some special notes to remember as you get your business card printing done.

Basic Guidelines

• For most businesses, use 7 or 8 point font for your address and contact information.

• Doctors, lawyers, and other professionals, however, often use smaller fonts. If you are a professional, you may want to consider using a 6 point font.

• Whatever font size you use for your address, use one size bigger for your name. In other words, if your address is in 7 point, use 8 point for your name.

• For your company name, you will go considerably bigger. Use a 12 to 15 point font for your company name.

• For the title of your card, if different than any other information, use the same size font as you used for your address. You can also go one point smaller if you prefer.

• NEVER print your address in less than 6 point font, even if you are a professional.

• NEVER print your name in larger than 11 point font, even if you are targeting senior citizens.

• NEVER print your address in larger than 9 point font.

Special Considerations

Some fonts just do not play well with others, as they appear to be a different size than the rest. In other words, if you set some fonts to 6 point, for instance, they will look like 5 point when you type. The “copperplate” font is this way. If a font just does not look right to you, pick a standard font (like Times New Roman or Arial) and type a few characters next to the strange-looking characters, in the same font size. If it is obvious that the font you are using goes by a different size format, go ahead and change the size setting to compensate.

You should also be careful when you are using a preset business card template. When you begin your business card printing project, it will have all the fonts set to the default size. You will want to look at the settings, and change them to the dimensions you want. Otherwise, you might be unpleasantly surprised by the results of your work.