Before ordering your salon or spa business cards, give some thought to how you want your end result to appear.
The first thing to consider is your "audience". Whose attention are you trying to get? Is it middle aged ladies, trendy young men, or teenage girls headed for prom? Or do you need to appeal to everyone?
For instance, if you're trying to have a young crowd or families attracted to your salon, cartoony graphics, and maybe rounded corners are in order.
Secondly, make sure your colors actually match and don't clash. Be sure the font colors you choose are strong enough to be seen over all the other elements on the card. An example: If you are using a template that has a greyscale background, white is probably not going to show up well enough. The exception is if the card designer you are using (like the one on BusinessCardsThatWork.com ) has a drop shadow option- this makes the letters pop out from the background.
Then you want to think about your font type- that is, how the letters actually look. There are a gajillion fonts to use but you only need 2, maybe 3 max. Don't overdo it or it will end up looking very unorganized. Choose a font that suits your salon- for men, the very sporty looking bullpen 3d font is great- sort of reminds you of baseball. For kids, the font "comic sans" is always perfect. You can also never go wrong with a classic like Times-Roman, or Georgia. Use italics, bold, and shadows for highlights, but don't go overboard.
Pictures- do you need to add any graphics of you own to the card, or leave it as is? A good addition might be a picture of the salon itself (it if looks good), or inside the salon; maybe a group pic of your stylists of a head shot of the stylist whose card it is. Have a logo? If not, why? Come up with something simple yet memorable. There are a few business card sites that let you build a gallery of your own pics, to upload and tweak as you'd like. BusinessCardsThatWork.com is one of them.
Double sided business cards are great- you can put a little fill-in form to write in their next appointment info. If your business does almost exclusively walk ins, there's not much need for this. This is also a good place for a map, a list of specialties, bio of a hairdresser, company history, etc.
There are 3 types of business card finishes you can get from most business card companies- matte, c2v, and UV coated. The matte coating isn't really a good choice in any case. They get dirty, bent up, and look just plain unprofessional. You may as well just print them out on your printer if you're gonna get those. C2V coating is the right choice for most cards. It's not too glossy but not at all matte either. It provides your card with enough protection to withstand use.
UV coating is a shiny, glossy coating that's a little more expensive but often worth it. I wouldn't go dipping them in water or running over them with a car, but they will darn sure last WAY longer than any other biz cards. If you're going to spend a significant amount of money on business cards, go the extra mile and give them a little insurance.
Experiment- get 2 different sets of 250 each, and see which one seems to get the best response.
In conclusion, approach your business cards design with thought beforehand. Don't wait until you've started designing to come up with your colors, fonts and graphics.
