Postcard Design - The Easy Way

What makes for a good postcard design? Is it a good image? Perhaps the words? Maybe it’s the feel of the cardboard beneath the fingers? Or maybe not. Thanks to the internet postcards have taken on a new form. Instead of having a vast amount of postcards printed, stamped and sent, business owners have resorted to technology for high class electronic postcards at a fraction of the usual costs. So how is postcard design done, be it electronic or paper-based?

In its broadest aspect postcard design is extremely easy and only as time consuming as the level of detail one wishes to embed in the postcard design itself. The main problem however comes in when deciding on the purpose of the postcard: business or tourism. Or both. And the reason is in itself simplistic: business postcard design has to adhere to a certain standard set by business competitors. Tourist-oriented postcards, on the other hand, can be as simple as taking a picture of any tourist attraction in the locale and then using that picture as the main focal point of the postcard. So let’s take a closer look at the postcard design procedure.

Essential Equipment for Good Postcard Design

Among the equipment you’ll need, the following should be listed:

• A computer – most, if not all, of those sold nowadays should be sufficient.

• A camera – unless you are an excellent and skilful graphic designer, a camera would make the job just so much easier.

• Software – There exists a software package for just about anything you can think about, including postcard design. While those are plentiful, you’ll have more control over the design and layout of the postcard by purchasing two separate packages, one intended for image manipulation and another intended for desktop publishing.

Now, assuming that you have the above equipment or anything of an equivalent standard, we’ll move on to the actual design process. Although it is entirely up to you, we’d like to caution on a few things which could aid sales, be it for your business or from a tourist perspective.

Business: This one can be more complicated than the standard tourist postcard. In this instance the words you use matter much, much more than the image, although the image has to be good enough to make an initial impression on the reader. Going by corporate business standards for good postcard design, it could prove to be a challenge.

However we’ve undertaken to supply you with an article that should supply you with solutions, not problems. It could therefore be prudent to keep your business postcard design extremely simple – most of the best ones are. Think about a single word in small casing on the front of your business postcard design, something snappy and interesting which would require the reader to turn the card around. It’s about ingenuity and doing that which people won’t expect.

Tourism: This is as easy as taking a nice picture of any local tourist attraction and, should you feel it appropriate or necessary, supplying it with an excellent quip. The funnier the better as people are on holiday to have fun and like to let those not on holiday know about it.

When all’s said and done, postcard design is probably one of the most enjoyable things to do. For those wishing to do business postcard design for printing and posting purposes, we’ll suggest that you save yourself some money by enlisting the services of an online printing firm.

 

Article created on 5/4/2009

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