Photo Business Cards

I've designed several photo business cards for animal related industries and many of them have done quite well using livestock photos on their business cards. Dog breeders, horse breeders and cattle ranches in particular. But if you have an animal related business, you would do well to use photos of the animals you deal with to provide a visual impact to your marketing efforts. Just make sure to get photos of your animals looking their best. There was a segment on a late night talk show recently where they were showing ridiculous print-ads with crazy typos, unintentional double entendre and odd photos. One of these was for an animal shelter showcasing their 'dog of the week'. The photo in the ad showed a very nice looking dog, but he was lifting his leg and peeing in the photo! Someone just wasn't

Another point to consider is the background. This can be particularly challenging with livestock photos. Some ranches have beautiful rolling pastures with picturesque scenery. But some farms and kennels are far from picturesque. Try to get a photo of your animal in a nice looking setting. For dogs, this can be easy, just take them to the local park. But for larger critters, this can be challenging. If you cannot get a great photo in a nice setting, just get the great photo. A good graphic designer can cut out the background and replace it with something grand. This is usually considered custom work, but some printing companies offer this service as part of their photo business cards' selling feature.

The lesson here is an important one, because I see it all the time. Don't just use whatever photos you have on hand. Make sure the images you choose for your photo business cards are the best they can be. You would be amazed at how many people order photo business cards and send in horrible photos because that's all they had. If you don't already have fantastic photos of your animals, take some time and get some. Great photos will be very valuable, not just for photo business cards, but for all of your marketing efforts.
If you do find yourself needing photo business cards in a hurry and you don't have a great photo of your animals, many printing companies offer stock animal photo business cards on their websites. This can be a very helpful service if you have an important show coming up. It's not your animal, but it's guaranteed to be a great photo and a great looking business card to get you by until you have time to take your own photos for your next set of business cards.

If you have multiple animals to show (like a breeder would), you have some great options for effective layouts in photo business card designs. The most common option is to use a photo of your best animal with your company name and contact info superimposed over the edges of the photo. But if you want to display more than one animal, you may want to consider two-sided business cards or even fold-over business cards.
With two-sided business cards, you can use the photo of your 'champion' on one side, along with your company and contact information, then use a collage of 4 to 6 smaller photos of other animals on the back side. Don't worry about the loss of detail in the smaller photos in the collage, the point of the photo business cards is not to make a sale, but to drive customers to your website or to call you. If you have a website, this is where customers could get the larger, detailed images they need to see in order to make a buying decision.
Fold-over photo business cards really open up your options. Fold-over business cards are twice the size of standard business cards, so you can fit twice as much information or twice as much imagery. But they fold down to the size of a standard photo business cards and fit in you pocket, wallet, business card holder, or display rack the same as any other business cards. They are particularly useful when you want to display photos with no text over them. You can display a photo on the front, a collage on the back, all of your info on the inside bottom panel and yet another photo or collage on the inside top panel. That's just an example, there are lots more options for great layouts with fold-over photo business cards.