Everyone of us is the target of some particular advertising campaign, some of you may be more receptive to controversial advertisements and some other to strong imagery. However, there is a category of advertising that usually manages to attract the majority of people, the funny ads.
Advertisers know that humor can stick in people’s minds and sometimes become viral, that’s why we often see creatively ironic ads or commercials that can make us giggle. They can play on double meanings, mock somebody or something, distort reality or showcase things from a different perspective with the aim to impress us and stick the message into our minds.
What you will see in this post are some of the clever and funny print ads that we liked the most. As usual, if you have any example of ad that you think could have made it into the list, tell us in the comments! Enjoy.
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If you are in marketing or sales and want to impress your client with your Name card, this might be good for you! With a little practice and perfect your timing. you can then impress and amaze your client anytime and anywhere! View the video Below:
You just left an important meeting with some industry big shots.
They really dug the ideas you brought to the table and you’re thinking a promotion could be in order. What do you do? Fumble with your phone to take down their contact information? Ask them to fumble with their phone to take down yours? No. You make one simple, swift exchange — your expertly designed business card.
In this day and age, most people don’t give business cards a second thought. Why take the time to make one when you can just store all your business contacts on your phone?
Well, here are two major reasons why:
Business cards can be a reflection of who you are. Not only can you make an excellent first impression all on your own, but a uniquely designed business card can help seal the deal and give someone something to remember you by.
Time. No matter how QWERTY savvy those little fingers are, putting someone’s name, email, and phone number into a phone takes valuable time neither party has. Hand them over a business card (which takes what, two seconds?) and you’ve given someone a carbon copy of your information they can do whatever they please with.
Now let’s get to some awesome business cards. And if you’re inspired after this post, you can design your own custom business cards with Canva.
01. Clean and Professional
Image Credit: Behance
This card is relatively simple to start, yet shines a light on how attention to detail can really set you apart. The simple front and back looks clean and professional, yet the subtle splatter effect on the logo and edges gives it a textural element that really stands out.
02. Transparency Meets Color
Image Credit: Behance
Things get taken up quite a few notches with this creative card. Transparency paper paired with different colors creates an interesting overlap effect when paired together, and when separate, light shines through to reveal whatever is underneath.
03. Explore the Unconventional
Image Credit: Behance
This is a great example of using an unconventional medium to create visual elements. Since you can’t duplicate every wine ring to look the same, each card has its own personality yet still fits together cohesively.
04. Elegant Shapes
Image Credit: Behance
A simple change in shape can set your card apart from the hundreds of others that use the rectangular format. A square is a simple, elegant shape that provides a great starting point for a business card.
05. Subtle Curves
Image Credit: Behance
If you really like the horizontal rectangular format, you can add in customized edges to stand out. The shape is still simple, but adjusted just enough to give it a softer feel with the subtle curves.
06. Upscale
Image Credit: Behance
Adding extra elements like sleeves can make your cards feel more upscale. The process of taking the card out is reminiscent of opening a gift or a letter, which makes the idea of receiving it much more exciting.
07. A Personal Touch
Image Credit: Behance
Using rubber stamps to place your logo on your card makes it feel much more personal, since you’ve taken the time to stamp each individual one, which shows you have an investment in your company or business.
08. Fun and Informal
Image Credit: Behance
Business cards don’t have to be flat and static. This pop up card shows just how creative you can get. It’s fun and informal, which is a breath of fresh air compared to standard ones.
09. Depth with Symbols
Image Credit: Behance
If bright color isn’t your style, imprinting symbols or logos into your card gives it a lot of depth. Try imprinting something relatable to your business, or choose a pattern that meshes well.
10. Contrasting Colors
Image Credit: Behance
A great way to keep things simple yet interesting is contrast between colors. Indentation was used, but the contrast between the bright green and the natural recycled paper helps keep this card fun, yet grounded.
11. Tricks with Transparency
Image Credit: Dribbble
Here’s another card using transparency, but this one uses blank areas in the ink to allow for see through windows. The type is see through, as well as the logo, so wherever you lay it down that color will shine through and be unique every time.
12. Speak to Who You Are
Image Credit: Dribbble
Utilizing aspects of your profession in your card makes for great visuals. For instance, here a film company uses a clapperboard as their card. A simple graphic, yet it speaks immediately about who they are and what they do.
13. Change the Orientation
Image Credit: Dribbble
Changing the orientation from horizontal to vertical can make your card stand out as well, and adding patterning around the edges can make a simple design more complex.
14. Simple Yet Effective
Image Credit: Dribbble
This card is incredibly simple, but incredibly effective. It uses a die cut to make a simple graphic more interesting. The raised type gives an awesome contrast to the punched out holes.
15. Experiment with Materials
Image Credit: Dribbble
Being unconventional by using different materials can make a huge difference in the feel of your business card. Wood was used, giving it a natural and earthy look, as well as a different feel in your hand.
16. Play with Type
Image Credit: Dribbble
Typography can be used for both information and decoration in the place of graphics. In this card, a couple of graphics are used, but the type is the major player.
17. Typographic Texture
Image Credit: Dribbble
Typography is used in this card as well, but the texture lends so much more than plain printed text. These cards were hand sanded to give them a worn down appearance.
18. Add Graphics
Image Credit: Dribbble
Interchangeable graphics related to your business can be a fun way to add some variety into your cards. They still feel unified, but are more interesting since you could get a variety of different images.
19. Ticket Cut
Image Credit: Dribbble
Here’s what’s called a ticket cut. A simple rectangle with a few notches cut out gives a more interesting appearance than straight edges.
20. Unique Shapes
Image Credit: Dribbble
This card completely scraps the idea of the conventional straight edged card. Unique shapes can be cut out and used in place of rectangles and squares, allowing you to entirely customize your card.
21. Attention to Detail
Image Credit: Dribbble
Rubber stamps are used in this card as well, but translates the rounded corners of the logo into the card itself. The attention to detail makes it look thought out and professional.
22. Create Feeling with Texture
Image Credit: Dribbble
These cards are hand pressed to give a wooden texture to the background. The indentations give a nice feel when you hold the card, and make the white background more interesting.
23. Get Relative
Image Credit: Dribbble
Here is a play on a deck of cards. Relating a business card to something it’s similar to is a fun way to stand out and be remembered.
24. Difference with Diamonds
Image Credit: Dribbble
If you like the square shape but want it to be a bit more interesting, turn it on its end. Diamonds are simple enough to get printed standardly, but different enough to stand out.
25. 3D Effects
Image Credit: Dribbble
The custom shape makes this card unique, but the two shades of teal paired with the shape gives it an almost three-dimensional effect. Different tones in the same color family help make designs more cohesive.
26. Reference your Materials
Image Credit: Dribbble
The transparency of this card makes it stand out, but not as much as the meaning behind it. Photographers look through a lens. Much like you look through this card. Try relating the significance of your materials with your profession as much as possible.
27. Create Curves
Image Credit: Dribbble
Simple and square again, yet with rounded corners this time. This card relates the curves of the logo with the curves of the corners.
28. Create an Illusion
Image Credit: Dribbble
The shape of this card relates well to the profession and acts as a visual element along with the logo, giving it the illusion of a tattoo itself.
29. Hand Stitched Logo
Image Credit: Dribbble
Thinking of creative ways to display your logo without taking up a bunch of space can help keep things simple. Hand stitching the logo on the side like a clothing tag saves space on the card, yet adds an interesting element.
30. Nice and Slim
Image Credit: Dribbble
Shaving off an inch of a standard rectangular card gives you a more elongated shape that looks nice and slim. Bigger isn’t always better, and this is a good example.
31. Design With a Twist
Image Credit: Coolmaterial
Utilizing aspects of your business to create your card makes it feel more authentic and approachable. Here foldable foam is used to create a mini yoga mat for a yoga studio, a fun and witty take on a traditional card.
32. A Fun Experience
Image Credit: Cdn26.printing-cdn
Yoga again, and really fun again. Using interactive cut outs on your card creates a fun experience for the user and helps them remember you.
33. Free Stuff
Image Credit: Toxel
Everyone loves getting free stuff, so why not incorporate that with your card? Here a hairstylist uses bobby pins to make the illusion of hair, and you get to use them.
34. Arrange your Elements
Image Credit: Rethinkcanada
Here’s a great example of using elements of your business as design elements. You immediately recognize it’s about cheese without actually seeing a piece of it, since the die cuts are arranged so familiarly.
35. Go Wild
Image Credit: Brainjet
This card might be a tad too crazy for some, but it brings a whole new meaning to functional. The card is made of metal and actually serves a purpose —grating cheese.
36. Play-on-Visuals
Image Credit: Businesscarddesignideas
Utilizing a sleeve with a peekaboo window can give you a two for one when it comes to the inner design. Here what starts as a cavity becomes the telephone, a cute play on why you’d be visiting a dentist in the first place.
37. Draw Fond Memories
Image Credit: Designbolts
Another play on why you go to the dentist, here an entire mouth is used, reminiscent of the chattering teeth toys we all know so fondly.
38. Quirky and Clever
Image Credit: Designbolts
At first glance, this card isn’t really legible, but after stretching the rubber material you can read the information. A personal trainer making you work before you even schedule an appointment? Clever.
39. Design with Purpose
Image Credit: i0.wp
Taking something two dimensional into three-dimensional is a fun and interactive way to engage whoever you give your card to. Here the switch serves a purpose, which makes it even more effective.
40. Humour and Practicality
Image Credit: Ihaveanidea
Humor and practicality are used in a great way here. Not only does it create a little smile in a stressful situation, but you save on printing cards, why give two when you could just give one?
41. Simple Pop Up
Image Credit: Weburbanist
A more simple pop up is used here, but it still adds a cool dimensionality versus a flat card.
Peel away stickers can be used as well to reveal a transition or a new image underneath. It’s interactive and interesting enough to create an impression.
43. Crafty Cut Outs
Image Credit: Pmyk
Here pop ups are used again, but in a much more crafty way. The cuts out are folded back to show different colors underneath. The same pattern is used, but the different colors give each card a different personality.
44. Design for Interaction
Image Credit: Cardrabbit
This card is all about interaction. The card is cut and rolled up, and then you style the ‘hair’ however you want. The overall design is really simple, but the customization puts it over the top.
45. Cool Effects
Image Credit: Payload.cargocollective
While this card doesn’t have as much interaction as the previous, it still has a cool effect. You pull away the die cut bottom and the shape of a comb appears, relating back to the profession.
46. Clarify your Message
Image Credit: S-media-cache-ak0.pinimg
Even less interactive, but just as effective, this card shows what this person can do for you. The message is clear and represented simply, with the indentations adding an extra element.
47. Functional Design
Image Credit: Justsomething
Another metal functional card, this card can be kept and used as a tool on a bicycle. Something as durable and useful as this ensures that whoever has it will see your name again and again as they use it.
48. Think Outside the Box
Image Credit: Cruzine
Using elements of your profession doesn’t have to be as literal as a bike tool. Here it shows a more metaphorical aspect of what they can do for you.
49. Heat Activated
Image Credit: Cardezine
While this card might not be as practical as others, it’s definitely out of the box. Heat activated ink reveals the brand and contact information, giving it a cool, scorched effect.
50. Go Green
Credit: Marvia
Giving your business card a second chance at life is a great way to help reduce the possibility of it getting thrown out. Biodegradable paper seed packets are simple to find and getting them customized is just as easy.
Spot Colors
Colors created without screens or dots, such as those found in the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM®, are referred to in the industry as spot or solid colors. From a palette of 14 basic colors, each of the spot colors in the PANTONE MATCHING System is mixed according to its own unique ink mixing formula developed by Pantone. You probably mixed yellow and blue paint to get green in your youth. Creating a PANTONE Spot color is similar in concept, but with the added need for precision.
Mixing inks to create a PANTONE Color.
The precision begins with the printing ink manufacturers who are licensed by Pantone to manufacture inks for mixing PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM Colors. To retain their license, they must annually submit samples of the 14 basic colors for approval by Pantone. Printers can then order the colors by number or mix it themselves according to the ink mixing formula in a PANTONE® FORMULA GUIDE. A PANTONE Chip supplied with the ink and/or job ensures that the printer achieves the color desired by the customer.
The PANTONE® FORMULA GUIDE with 1755 PANTONE PLUS Colors on coated and uncoated stock.
Each color in the System has a unique name or number followed by either a C, U or M. The letter suffix refers to the paper stock on which it is printed: C for Coated paper, U for Uncoated paper and M for Matte paper. Also created without screens, PANTONE metallic and pastel colors are considered part of the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM.Due to the gamut of the 14 basic colors, some spot colors will be cleaner and brighter than if they were created in the four-color process described below. Spot colors are commonly used in corporate logos and identity programs, and in one, two or three-color jobs.
Process Colors
This method of achieving color in printing is referred to as CMYK, four–color process, 4/c process or even just process. To reproduce a color image, a file is separated into four different colors: Cyan (C), Magenta (M), Yellow (Y) and Black (K).
A color image is separated into CMYK. When printed on paper, the original image is recreated.
During separation, screen tints comprised of small dots are applied at different angles to each of the four colors. The screened separations are then transferred to four different printing plates, one for each color, and run on a printing press with one color overprinting the next. The composite image fools the naked eye with the illusion of continuous tone.
PANTONE 4–COLOR PROCESS guide set. Displays 3,010 CMYK combinations with screen tint percentages. A guide on uncoated paper is included in the set.
Process colors are represented as percentages of cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Varying the percentages offers thousands of color possibilities. When four-color process printing is used to reproduce photographs, decorative elements such as borders and graphics can be created out of process colors. This helps to avoid the added expense of an extra plate needed for printing each spot color.
Converting spot colors to process colors.
Often times, a spot PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM Color is requested when creating a four–color process piece. To save money, the spot color should be evaluated to see how printing in CMYK will look like. While some colors can be simulated well, there are many that look quite different. As the quality of the resulting color conversion is very subjective, the designer can make decisions using the PANTONE® COLOR BRIDGE™ guide.
The PANTONE® COLOR BRIDGE™ guide displays each PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM Color and its corresponding simulation in CMYK.
Every knowledgeable art student should be very familiar with printers. They see them and use them every time they have a submission deadline coming up. Marketing and Communications students are aware of the different media types used in advertising and public relations campaigns, and posters are one of the simplest forms of media. Poster-design is the most common classroom activity in Singapore schools because it is easy to carry out on a large-scale which involve all the students.
Giving out name cards at every first business meeting is protocol. So name cards are really the doormats of your company.
While you have an exciting idea for your name card design or you already have it designed, the name card is not complete until it is printed. Of course, printing a name card cannot be on just any paper. There are varying degrees of professionalism and impressions emulated based on the types of paper the name cards are printed on. If you don’t know what type of paper to use or what your namecard printing guy is talking about, this is for you.
Before that, a brief summary of some terms: the acronym “gsm” stands for grams per square meter, so the higher the number of gsm, the thicker and heavier it is. Art card is just the term for the type of card used typically for name cards. For textures, there are two types of coating: glossy and matte lamination. As for printing services, there are digital printing and offset printing. We will touch on that later in another article.
1. Formal and very professional, no-nonsense, please.
You conduct very serious business meetings and propose deals of unthinkable amounts of money. You cannot mess it up, and you don’t mess around. Your name card is black and has hints of gold or silver, adding on to the reality with elaborate and sophisticated designs.
Would you 3D print an engagement ring? Brian Park thinks his new startup Trove will entice people to design and wear 3D-printed metal jewelry.
Brian Park was a product manager for social video game company Zynga for a year and a half before he saw opportunity knocking in a field in which he had no experience: 3D printing and jewelry.
Jewelry in particular is one industry poised to change thanks to advances in 3D printing and computer-aided design technologies. At the crux of it all is customization for the masses. Introducing a digital workflow to the creation of jewelry means that people can design their own jewelry before purchasing it, and with 3D printing, inexpensive plastic prototypes can be created for sizing and fit before money is spent on creating metal jewelry.
This is what Park saw in creating Trove, a New York-based startup founded in fall 2014 that publicly launched Oct. 8. From a catalog of about 30 available base designs, customers pick a starting design and begin customizing rings, bracelets, or necklaces, from their Internet browser. Trove uses an in-house Formlabs desktop 3D printer to create initial prototypes of base jewelry designs so that the company knows the designs are printable to begin with.
After approving the customer’s design, Trove ships a plastic prototype for the customer to try on. (Printing, however, is outsourced to Shapeways, an online marketplace of 3D-print files that also prints 3D objects, as well as Brooklyn-based commercial 3D-printing service Voodoo Manufacturing.) Once the customer approves of the final design, they can choose to print their jewelry in gold, silver, bronze, or brass. Prices start at $50, but something like a silver ring will cost between $80 and $90.
“People wanted 3D-printed products in metals. You can do single-batch manufacturing very cheaply, but when you customize, it’s not very cost-effective,” says Park.
Trove has six full-time employees, and has raised an initial round of $640,000 in seed funding.
Consider this the next level up of what might be called the trinket economy of 3D printing. End-use, 3D-printed products are becoming more common in the manufacturing sector. Some airline companies, for instance, have begun using 3D-printed parts in their planes. NASA has taken to testing 3D-printed rocket injectors. But the market for 3D-printed products for consumers—people who aren’t going to buy a 3D printer themselves—has a tendency to appear frivolous. Producing bobbleheads of people via 3D printing is a neat concept, but it’s basically an answer to a problem that isn’t really a problem. And home goods produced by 3D printing, at least in Park’s experience, doesn’t seem to be a viable market.
“We started out [printing] in home goods,” he says. “But we realized that people don’t buy customized home goods enough to make it a viable business.”
So far for Trove, jewelry has proved to be something customers are eager to customize. (Prior to launching Oct. 8, Park and his team tested out the platform for a few months.) Designs made on Trove’s platform stay in an online database, available for other customers to order as-is or further customize. An example of how it works: When a ring is being created on Trove, what customers see is a simple user interface that allows them to bend and straighten the left and right sides of the ring by moving a button on a slider shown on the left side of a screen—they’re not actually designing anything from scratch.
“The fact that you can manipulate these designs, and then create anything, is the true value,” says Park. “This is bringing 3D printing to the average user in a way the average user will want to use it.”
Last month, NASA announced the winner of its 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, a competition in which entrants were tasked to develop architectural concepts. These concepts were to implement 3D printing techniques for the construction of habitats on Mars, using materials that could be sourced from the Red Planet itself.
The 3D Printed Habitat Challenge received 165 submissions, with the thirty highest scoring entries being displayed at the New York Maker Faire on September 27th. The overall winner and recipient of the $25,000 grand prize was Team Space Exploration Architecture and Clouds Architecture Office with their Mars Ice House design. The runners up were Team Gamma, who received $15,000, whilst third place was awarded to Team LavaHive.
“The creativity and depth of the designs we’ve seen have impressed us,” said Centennial Challenges Program Manager Monsi Roman. “These teams were not only imaginative and artistic with their entries, but they also really took into account the life-dependent functionality our future space explorers will need in an off-Earth habitat.”
Although not a podium finisher themselves, a team from the MIT school of architecture has unveiled details of its Ouroboros concept, named after the Ancient Greek symbol of a snake eating its tail, which was one of the thirty finalists. The concept was inspired by NASA’s 2007 discovery of a region of Mars called Silica Valley. At Silica Valley, the robotic rover Spirit, active from 2004-2010, detected soil on this area of the planet was made up of up to 60% silica. At the time of discovery, NASA speculated that the “patch of bright-toned soil” was “so rich in silica that scientists propose water must have been involved in concentrating it”.
The Silica Valley discovery piqued the interests of the MIT group, since silica is one of the raw materials needed to make glass, which could be 3D printed in its molten form to create a kind of fibreglass—an ideal material for building structures on the alien planet.
Caitlin Mueller, assistant professor in building technology and director of the Digital Structures group, explained how “thinking about it was really fun because you really are starting from scratch.” The group had to think outside of the box, since Mars has only a third of the gravity of Earth, and temperatures of below zero for most of the year. Furthermore, there is a lack of atmosphere on the Red Planet, which means that structures would have to be pressurised from within to withstand the vacuum of the space.
“Paradoxically, being in an alien environment in the future frees us up to be a little more conceptual,” said Justin Lavallee, technical instructor and the director of the Architecture Shops at the School of Architecture, and a collaborator on the project. “We can be a little more exploratory without being so bogged down in current understanding of what will and won’t work in architecture.”
Mueller’s area of expertise concerns the deployment of new methods of 3D printing. Specifically, she has been exploring 3D printing techniques which, rather than going in horizontal layers as typical 3D printers do, actually follow the stress-lines of structures to ensure superior strength. Lavallee’s recent recent research has involved working with new thermoplastic composite materials. The duo shared their ideas to create a 3D printer that could extrude the composite material and shape it, whilst weaving it together with fibreglass for strength and shape.
The two experts collaborated with a number of MIT students on the project, who each offered their own unique ideas. “It wasn’t just us teaching them how to build a structure on Mars, because none of us know how to do that,” said Mueller. “We were figuring it out together.”
The team’s final design took a toroidal (donut) shape, which could both be inflated with pressurised air. Architecture student Nicole Ashurian explained how the Martian environment was a completely different challenge to those generally faced on Earth. “You have minor variances sometimes, up in the mountains, or where it’s really hot, but never do we have to question the atmosphere,” the Master’s student said. “We were really dependent on the engineering students to help fill us in.”
To create a model of the habitat, Lavallee took charge in the architecture shop, using metal, aluminum, and thermoplastics to build a prototype of the structure. “Many of the projects we work on focus narrowly on one tool or one machine,” he explained. “This was exciting because it demonstrated how we could bring all of our capabilities to bear.”
Whilst the team’s design did not win the competition, their research could well be used as a springboard for new 3D printed habitat designs to be used on Mars. Whether NASA will have built a neighbourhood of structures in Silica Valley by 2035 is another matter altogether.
A different from offline printing services to online advertising, contemporary companies know from the get-go that social media is going to be an essential part of their marketing plan – it’s inescapable! So they have to think, from the very conception of their branding, how they’re going to use their logo across the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and more.
While the majority of brands are creating logos that fit all the right rules and can be used as-is in social media, there are a lot of creative people finding different ways to brand their social media.
Let’s take a look into a series of companies using roundabout ways to integrate their logo and social media branding — how they’ve adapted their existing branding, and what we can learn from their efforts.
Juniper Ridge
Website:
Facebook:
Style: Abstract
Juniper Ridge opted for symbols, rather than text, in their social branding. They take it to a new level by choosing an icon that’s not elsewhere associated with their brand, tying their social media channels back to the website by echoing the illustrative style that’s embedded throughout their website.
