I’m helping my girlfriend Ashley start up her real estate business and website, Scottsdale AZ Homes For Sale.
Here’s what we’ve done so far:
- How to buy an after-market domain name. Check!
- Pick an ugly wordpress template. Check! (Design will be changing soon.)
- How to design a real estate business card. Check!
On my blog, I want to dig deeper into #3 and explain how I made an ugly business card much prettier with the help of a few friends.
Step 1) Learn The Pen Tool
I really liked the wavy lines in this sample design. It looked classy and professional.
So I IM’ed my good buddy Justin Youens and asked what tool was used to create that? Adobe’s Pen Tool.
So I start playing around with it, and here’s what I got. Pretty awful. LOL!!
Justin then got on Skype screen sharing with me and showed me how to set a point, drag the handles, set another point, etc. (Here’s a 28 minute YouTube video showing how to use Adobe Illustrator’s Pen tool. It says pretty much the same thing.)
Step 2) Less (Anchor Points) is More!
I’m a minimalist by nature, so I knew I didn’t want to get too crazy. So I set the first anchor point in the upper right, made small handles. Set the next point in the middle, small handles. Third point, off the card to the left, small handles. Fourth point on the bottom left. Fifth point on the bottom right. Then tie it all together by clicking on the first point in the upper right.
Next, copy the shape, move it up and to the left slightly, send it backwards, and set the transparency / opacity to 66%.
Third, paste the shape again, move it to the bottom directly below the first all black shape. I also added a slight gradient for fun after watching this YouTube tutorial about Adobe Illustrator Gradients. I thought about doing more gradients, but didn’t want to break my minimalistic design.
Step 3) Fonts Really Matter
So I had my basic design. Time to add the words. Here’s the default, Myriad. And wow, talk about cheeseball city!! 
At this point, I was laughing at myself thinking, “I’m never going to make this look any good.” I forwarded a screen shot to my buddy Chris Drake with the words, “I don’t know why anyone thinks I need help with graphic design?” to which he replied, “LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Good point Chris. I then spent 2 hours scrolling through Mac’s FontBook looking at different fonts. I wanted something more soft than sharp, more playful than serious, but not too playful.
I tried out the Foot Lite MT, but it was too sharp.
Giddyup Std looked great on the name, but bad on everything else.
I finally settled on Giddyup Std for the name and Minion Pro for everything else. It was starting to look a lot better.
Step 4) Fix Your Vertical Alignment
Casey Barthels is an AMAZING graphic designer. Like, crazy stupid amazing. I sent a screen shot and down-played my pride using the same line I used with Chris, “I don’t know why anyone thinks I need help with graphic design?” to which Casey replied “I know, weird! 
…hahahaahaha.” which made me laugh, but deflated my pride because he was right.
But then he said, “Actually man, that blows the doors off most non-pro design.” which re-inflated my tires.
We yacked back and for a bit more over IM, and he told me to send him the file. About 30 minutes later, he sent back this. Notice the improvement just by focusing on horizontal and vertical alignment of the lettering.
Step 5) Touch-Ups
Sent another screen shot back to Chris Drake and got a “Boo yah!” reply. So I knew I had something. But Chris gave some great final tips on scrunching up the design areas so I could move Ashley’s image below the safe line to make sure we didn’t make her look bald. Good call Chris!! Here’s the final design.
Thanks
Big time thanks to Chris, Justin, and Casey for their help! Ashley will re-pay you with…free real estate help. Don’t you guys go getting carried away!
If you enjoyed this post, you’ll probably also enjoy How to design a real estate business card.
