A business card is a 2 x 3.5-inch billboard that promotes a business. Like a full-size billboard, it must effectively convey specific information in the blink of an eye. Otherwise, it may get tossed or die a slow death in someone’s pocket. You can create high-impact health coach business cards by following these simple guidelines.
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9 Tips to Make an Awesome Health Coach Business Card
Business cards can look deceptively simple, but there are many do’s and don’ts you’ll need to follow in order to create one that grabs attention and magnetizes clients:
1. Design Your Logo Before Doing Anything Else
A logo is the symbol that represents a business, such as the Nike swoosh, McDonald’s arches, and the Target bullseye. It’s a vital part of your branding, so think about what you want it to communicate. Also, avoid dated designs. Settle upon a classic design that will be contemporary 10 or even 20 years from now.
If you want to go all-out with your logo, you can hire a high-end design firm with fees starting from $100 to more than $10,000.
There are also independent designers who work on economical, web-based platforms such as 48 Hours Logo (which is the service we used to design the logo for Everything Health Coach) and Fiverr, where you can find fairly decent designers charging as little as $5.
For more information about designing an effective logo, check out our guide here.
2. Use Colors Effectively
This is the second element you should nail down before working on the rest of your card. Most designers suggest a 60-30-10 rule for color combinations:
- The main color of your card should be sixty percent of the surface.
- Thirty percent of the color should be the secondary color.
- The accent color should cover 10 percent of your card.
Colors have a proven psychological effect and can evoke certain emotions. You can use this knowledge to impact how people react to your card:
- Red: Excitement, love
- Green: Nature, relaxation
- Blue: Friendly, creativity
- Purple: Soothing, royalty
- Orange: Urgency, passion
- Yellow: Cheerfulness, confidence
3. Use Legible Fonts
A readable font won’t only impart a clean look, but it’ll help people with poor eyesight. To this end, we’ve chosen three fonts suitable for effective business cards:
Code Pro: Chunky and clean, Code’s robust lines and sleek angles are modern yet polished.
Nevis: Solid but not overbearing, Nevis has strong angles especially eye-catching in bold.
Myriad Pro: Very refined and legible, Myriad Pro’s clean uppercase letters radiate professionalism.
Make sure the fonts on your card aren’t too small or elaborate. Your main text shouldn’t be smaller than eight point and your company’s name 12 to 15 point.
4. Use White Space
White spaces are areas on your card left open so it’s not engorged with clutter. The fewer elements, the more impact each one makes.
5. Include Your Contact Information
- Full name
- Title
- Business name
- Phone number
- Website
- Business address
- Business email (avoid using a funny, unusual or suggestive email address)
6. Include a Tagline
A tagline is a short, catchy quip identified with a specific product. Famous taglines include:
- Nike: Just Do It
- Maxwell House: Good to the Last Drop
- DeBeers: A Diamond is Forever
If you need help with naming your health coaching business, our dedicated guide can help.
7. Explore Card Materials and Finishes
You can choose from:
- Coated card: A coated card is a low-quality card typically coated on only one side.
- Quality art board: Art board is thick and fully coated on both sides. Good business cards are typically printed on 80-pound cover stock.
- Textured: Narrow ridges are indented into a textured card. Textured cards have more of a traditional appearance.
- Laminated: A laminated card is printed and then sealed on both sides with a thin laminate substance. There are two types of laminated cards:
- Matte: Matte is an understated, elegant laminate with a soft luster. When people write on your card, matte creates a better surface than glossy does.
- Glossy: A glossy card has an ultra-shiny surface. Gloss laminate protects the card from scratches and wear and tear and makes colors pop.
- Matte: Matte is an understated, elegant laminate with a soft luster. When people write on your card, matte creates a better surface than glossy does.
8. Venture Off the Beaten Path
There are many adventurous design elements you can incorporate into your health coach business card:
- Embossing: Embossing is a raised design that creates a three-dimensional effect.
- Die-cutting: This technique artistically cuts holes into your card or into shapes like dogs or flowers.
- Spot UV: Spot UV applies a high-gloss ultraviolet coating to a pinpointed area of a business card. For instance, spot UV can be applied so only your name is glossy.
- Foil stamping: In foil stamping, a pre-glued metallic foil is pressed into the surface of a card. It’s elegant and eye-catching and can accent specific parts of your card.
9. Proofread
There is no such thing as proofreading too many times. Even a single, seemingly minor error could spell trouble for your health coaching business.
So, what happens when all this information is pulled together? Done correctly, it can result in some extraordinary cards! Let’s take a look…
10 Health Coach Business Card Ideas Done Right
We’ve personally chosen some very well-designed business cards that exemplify the above criteria. These designs show how concepts are transformed into actual products:
- Shades of green and brown impart a natural feel. Graphics guide the eye toward the company information, framed by ample white space.
- This card’s dazzling yellow color, radiant sunburst, and outstretched figure emanate exuberance and triumph. Its vertical direction emphasizes expansion and growth.
- These pastels complement rather than compete. The ones on the front cleverly repeat on the back. It’s a happy, feminine card.
- This card features the beautiful symbolism of a path to the sun. Rectangles and soft shapes have nice visual interplay.
- The entire card portrays boldness, with the angular, unconventionally right-aligned color block and extroverted, supersized fruits. It has a wonderful balance and burst of colors.
- This card benefits from an intriguing, heart-shaped optical and well-played color psychology. Magenta represents kindness along with harmonious green.
- This card makes excellent use of complementary fonts and well-balanced primary, secondary and accent colors. It’s a refreshing look.
- Delicate white birds taking flight upon sunbeams look uplifting and hopeful. Well-placed white space imparts an airy and expansive feel.
- This card nicely balances stacked text and graduated colors. A yellow strip subtly divides the card’s information into two sections.
- This is an “in-your-face” card with a bold techno look. Blocky graphics and cool colors increase its high-tech vibe.
Now, if you’d rather not take out a second mortgage to pay a design firm to create your business card, there are much more economical ways of doing it…
Best Business Card Makers for Health Coaches
Online business card makers are a nice alternative to brick-and-mortar designers. Here are two online business card makers we’ve reviewed:
MOO
MOO is an online printer a tad on the expensive side, charging $19.99 for 50 cards, which translates into approximately 39 cents per card. However, MOO uses unique Printfinity technology, which prints up to 50 different designs on one side of every card in a batch. They offer a green paper, eco-friendly option and letterpress capability that can print any design with rounded corners.
Their matte cards have gorgeous color saturation but, unfortunately, the typeface isn’t crisp and looks rather rough around the edges. The texture is smooth and they have the substantial feel of a luxe card you’d buy elsewhere. Besides regular-size cards, they carry 3.3 x 2.16 “MOO” cards and 2.56 x 2.56 square mini-cards.
MOO is one of the few online printers with optional Near Field Communication (NFC) cards – these allow you to send your business card info to a client’s smartphone or tablet with a tap of the card. Four-layered Luxe cards are also available, which include two colored layers (your choice) in between.
Business cards are ready in one to 19 days, but you can get overnight delivery for an extra fee. MOO gets high marks for its live customer reps (real people!) who are knowledgeable about design and printing. You have the option of uploading your own designs or accessing MOO’s 1,300 templates. If you’re looking for an even border on your cards, though, you’re going to be disappointed. MOO doesn’t produce a precise crop, which isn’t a great thing, considering the cost.
Vistaprint
Vistaprint is a pioneering business card printer that made its mark by offering small, super-inexpensive batches of cards, with 250 extra free cards thrown in for first-time users. Economy is still one of Vistaprint’s main selling points, and it’s the defining one that sets it apart from MOO.
Vistaprint gives you more bang for your buck than MOO – 500 cards for $9.99 versus MOO’s 50 cards for $19.99. Vistaprint offers a substantial 10,000 templates compared to MOO’s 1,300. (The health coach business card ideas described above are just a few of many classy Vistaprint templates). For $5, you’ll also get limited access to Vistaprint’s graphic designers.
Along with great pricing, Vistaprint offers lots of great design options. Cards can be printed vertically as well as horizontally and can also be printed on eco-friendly paper. Choose 3.5 x 2 regular size cards, 3.5 x 2 rounded-corner cards, 2.5 x 2.5 square or 3.5 x 2 folded.
You can embellish your card with a variety of special finishes including UV spot printing, matte, metallic, gloss, plastic, ultra-thick, embossing, foil printing, linen, ultra-silky, and pearlescent. They also offer the Oreo cookie of business cards: two layers with a third, colored layer in the middle.
We found the entire Vistaprint design process relatively simple. First, we chose the design we wanted and filled in a form with our info. Then we customized things by deleting unused fields, dragging others around to where we wanted them and changed fonts where necessary. Let’s just say, if you can use PowerPoint, you can certainly create your own business cards with Vistaprint. 😉
You can also upload your own design if you wish. Vistaprint accepts 19 file types including TIFF, JPG, AI, and PNG.
Vistaprint is the best online business card printing service we’ve tried, with kudos to its superior print quality, excellent design tools, and economical prices.
Conclusion
A health coach business card isn’t something to create as an afterthought. Instead, it should be carefully and methodically crafted with a targeted purpose of eliciting a targeted result. When done right, your card can become a powerful marketing tool.
Moreover, a business card is actually a psychological device that encourages the thoughts you’d like your clients to think. By following the suggestions laid out in this article, you can ensure your card design stacks in your favor.
So, what are your thoughts about health coach business cards? Leave your comments below!
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I am looking to print some name cards for my business and glad to come across your recommendation. As the budget is tight, I don’t really want to hire any designer and planning to just DIY. The selection you have there are really professional looking and I really like the 7th one. Never heard of Vistaprint before, but will definitely check it out now.
Glad you found it helpful Cathy 🙂
Hi, thank you for a guide to what seems so obvious until you start doing it. I like that you explain the effect colors have on recipients like “Shades of green and brown impart a natural feel.” This would have an impact with how they engage.
I just started a business and even though we are in the digital age, the business card still works, especially when networking. I was in a meeting and when I got a card, I was asked if I had my cell phone for the reader at the back of their card. Do you know if any of these cards can be designed with a strip? I will probably redo my cards to be media ready. Thanks.
Hi there, yes, I think you’re referring to QR codes (Quick Response). I know for a fact that Moo offers that for business cards, which you can check out here. Hope that helps!
You are a lifesaver! This is exactly what I was looking for. I wanted a logo for my online business brand and a business card design.
I loved your logo and wanted to know how you created it. So I read your whole post, from top to bottom and visited each link to the programs suggested.
I am only a beginner with online entrepreneurship and do not have much money to spend on branding. After considering both, 48 Hour Logo and Fiverr, I have chosen Fiverr, using the link you supplied. I didn’t even know this platform existed and it’s so affordable.
I have also bookmarked 48 Hours Logo for future use for my other two websites. I like the fact that the designs for 48 Hours Logo look so professional.
You also provided very useful tips on what a professional business card should look like. I was not aware of all the different aspects that matter. I thank you for the lists and examples, as they give me a visual idea of what I need for my own brand.
After visiting both links to Vistaprint and Moo, it sounds like Vistaprint is the most affordable and, as you say, they have more variety with regards to templates and designs compared to Moo. Vistaprint also caters specifically to New Zealand, which is great for me, delivery-wise.
Therefore I am so glad I found your post before looking around. I was able to find the information I was wanting.
Your thoughtfulness in adding these options has saved me time from searching the internet. Thank you so much.
Glad you found the post useful… all the best!
I need to make some cards for my business. It’s not for being a health coach, but these are some great tips. I especially like the info about colors and making sure there is white space. We’re used to looking at white space on our phones. That’s how apps are designed. It’s good to keep that in mind when designing something we want people to pay attention to.
Yep, that’s right Nicole 🙂