Although today we have twitter, facebook, linkedIn or the other social media and portfolio platform that can make us stay connected, but I think business cards still play the important role for your marketing strategy. You also can put your social media accounts in your business card, and of course there are must have your name or company’s name, address, email and phone number.

Here, we have collected 45 most creative business cards that use good character/illustration designs to attract the attention of those intended and it is a good way for promoting yourself. Enjoy!

We hope this collection can help you in designing your business card. Which designs that you like? Do you have another creative business card designs? Feel free to share with us in the comment below.

Middle Country is a commonly used for describe a country with low levels of material weel-being. Because there is no fixed definition of middle country that are recognized internationally, the level of development could be varied in the developing world. A number of middle countries have an average standard of living is high.

That is what is usually used by large companies to develop their brand to the middle country, due to the condition of the Europe and America economics was entering a stagnation period, unstable financial, as well as an increase in debt, and did not rule out anyway if they were more popular branding in middle country of origin the company was founded.

And one of their marketing strategies is by optimizing facebook fan page. Why they use facebook? Because today has more than 900 million active users (Facebook on Wikipedia). Now, we’ll learn the secret of big player on Food & Beverage Companies were expanding their brand in Middle country using facebook.

1. Coca-Cola

Coca-cola is the company that originated in Atlanta, and improve its marketing in Gorgia since 1890-1900 with an increase of as much 4000%, amazing right?
Coca cola not just stopped there, the company has began raising their marketing area to middle country, here is one example Coca-Cola facebook fan page exists in Egypt.

Lesson: Learn the culture of the country, like what Coca-Cola did when they promote of their product in Egypt. Coca-Cola share a music about Ramadhan, because majority people in Egypt is moslem. Ramadhan is religious service before feast day Eid al-Fitr.

2. McDonalds

The McDonald’s concept was introduced in San Bernardino, California by Dick and Mac McDonald of Manchester, New Hampshire. In 1970’s Mc Donalds start to expand their business in the middle country, start from Costa Rica to Brazil.

Here’s one example of the McDonalds that developed branding of their products in Malaysia.

Lesson: There are two lessons that we can take from Mc. Donalds facebook fan page:
First, Malaysian society is the majority religion of moslem, they are not easy to belive with product with lack of concern “Halal” products offerings of a company. Mc Donalds saw this as an important thing, therefore serve the way making breakfast by McDonalds, it will make they costumer sure that the way making of McDonalds breakfast is “Halal”.

Second, like what I have said in the first lesson, Malaysian prioritized a “Halal” in every products so McDonalds never forgot to put a “Halal” logo in every products that they offer.

3. Starbucks

Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) is an international coffee and coffeehouse chainbased in Seattle, Washington. Starbucks is the largest coffee house company in the world, with more than 17,000 stores in 55 countries, including over 12,500 in the United States, over 1,200 in Canada and over 700 in the United Kingdom, and 53 in Russia.

One of them share their cafe in Brazil by using facebook, take a look the list of cafe that Starbucks open in Brazil, displayed on their facebook fan page.

Lesson: Share your shop location in facebook fan page, it can attract your customer to visit your shop.

4. Pringles

Pringles is a brand of potato and wheat-based snacks originally developed by Procter & Gamble. Pringles are sold in more than 140 countries and have yearly sales of more than US$1 billion. In April 2011, P&G agreed to the $2.35 billion sale of the brand to Diamond Foods of California, more than tripling the size of Diamond’s snack business. Pringles brand potato crisps were first sold in the United States in October 1968, and distributed internationally by the mid-1970s.

Let we see what Pringles did when branding their products in Espana, with their facebook fan page.

Like we see, Pringles gave “Campus” Theme in their opening facebook fan page. In this theme, Pringles implement to sampling products at a college campus in Spain, as we can see on photograph of some cities in Spain.

Lesson: Give some “theme” to your facebook fan page, make it real to the offline show, and share some pictures. It will make your customer realize that you’re real in their country.

5. Red Bull

Red Bull is an energy drink sold by the Austrian Red Bull GmbH, created in 1987 by the Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz. In terms of market share, Red Bull is the most popular energy drink in the world, with 3 billion cans sold each year. Amazing, Red Bull can popular in the world.

Let we see one example what Red bull did in Malaysia, by their facebook fan page Red Bull Malaysia.

What you see? A product that they called “Energize My Raya”, and below of the product reads “Selamat Hari Raya Aidel Fitri” which means peace the feast of idul Fitri to muslims who were in Malaysia, Red bull also rejoice to welcome Eid al- fitr in Malysia by making product packaging are specific to the feast of the muslims. Very interesting, I think the way Red Bull socialize with society Malaysia with equally celebrated the feast the majority society there.

Lesson: Adjust them products that you offer with existing conditions in the place product marketing, an easy way to socialize with the surrounding communities.

6. Subway

Subway is an American restaurant franchise that primarily sells submarine sandwiches (subs) and salads. It is owned and operated by Doctor’s Associates, Inc. (DAI). Subway is one of the fastest growing franchises in the world with 36,013 restaurants in 98 countries and territories as of January 17th, 2012.[1] It is the largest single-brand restaurant chain globally and is the second largest restaurant operator globally after Yum! Brands (over 37,000 locations).

Subway in everywhere, yes its true like we see in this example subway have a sluice of facebook fan page with the original language, with multiple photograph profile, marque subways different in every country that has been adjusted with interests and preferences, surefire trick to more closely consumers in various countries.

Lesson: Doing research on color, shape, and a sense of joy in each country that will have you headed, adjust with the product you are going to market.

Conclusion

The world economy is rapidly undergo reorientation towards the middle class is growing in the East and South, and the social innovators will follow, helping consumer, and the power of citizens to create change. These facts can also be intepreted that the focus of innovation in the social, cultural, economic, even has undergone a shift. This shift demands change scale of priorities, marketing strategies, and so on. Middle country seem to be promising new branding area amid the global economic crisis that plagued Europe and America at the moment and the furnace of the global economy today is in the area of industrialization in East and South, such as China, Brazil, Mexico, India, and Nigeria.

Anyway, these are secrets that’s been done by 6 Food & Beverage companies by using facebook fan page to open market in middle countries, HOw about you? Are there any other secrets that you can share? Feel free to give your thoughts in the comment below.

- Written by Ratih -

vCard is a minimalist version of portfolio website or an online business card, contain with minimal content (About page, portfolio page, contact page). Also use javascript effect like sliding, lightbox, fading and tab navigation to engage reader attention. One of the best ways to promote yourself and your expertise online.

Below we’ve collected 10 Amazing vCard website Templates, featured with responsive, clean, resume page and more. To help you find the best vCard templates and start promote yourself online.

WordPress Themes

by QuanticaLabs
Cascade is a minimalist personal vCard WordPress theme based on vertical menu tabs.
Tabs are presenting pages content. Each page is one Cascade tab.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshots

by 9dlabs
Super Slick Vcard comes in 7 eye catchy color versions, loaded with extra (never before) features like detailed overview panel, live twitter feed, flexible google map panel etc. The vcard has the ability to show extra texts/informations, display live feeds from your twitter account, show google map (flexible panel), links to your social profiles, display your portfolio (images/videos/flash) and do almost everything you want.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshots

by thememates
Precision – Premium vCard WordPress Theme is a sleek and minimalist single page WordPress theme with smooth scrolling design and amazing effects!

It has a unique “brochure style” design with a fixed left hand side so your image slide-show is always visible. The home page is built inside a content slider (supports anything) this can slide, fade or be a static page. Suitable for virtual card, mini portfolio and personal bio websites.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshots

HTML/CSS Templates

by revaxarts
A sleek personal vCard page. It comes in 8 colors both on dark or on light background also support to over 60 Social Media Possibilities.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshots

by rbista
Zwin is an impressive and professional online vcard, a beautiful portfolio with sliding effect, resume and contact information with Google map.
It’s simple! Just download and install in a few minutes, you can show your online card to your friend, customer or employer in an interview by phone or tablet. Because Zwin is a responsive template, you can view your website on pc as well as handheld devices.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshots

by jimmyme
This is a clean and professional flash like template, perfect for personal website. It’s a simple and minimal looking site with a rare shuffle effect.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshots

by JoelBesada
Squares is a vCard/Portfolio template built with the latest web standards and best practices. Introduce yourself and your work to future clients and employers through a clean and simple web page.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshots

by NORDiX
Features:

• Modernizr – enables HTML5 elements IE
• Jquery Nivo slider Plugin
• Jquery PrettyPhoto Gallery Plugin
• Working Contact Form Ajax/PHP & Validate
• Google CDN ’s jQuery or local
• Google Analytics
• CrossBrowser support
• More…

Demo Buy Now

Screenshots

by graphic_dev
Notebook is a professional one-page virtual business card. It’s perfect for showcasing yourself and your skills in a small but yet effective format.

The template is cross-browser-friendly and uses the power of the HTML5 boilerplate. The code is well structured with comments and it comes with a detailed documentation, so customizing the template to your needs is a peice of cake.

Demo Buy Now

Screenshots

by mladenjacket
Sharp is minimalistic, clean and modern one page personal vCard template coded in HTML5 and CSS3 with loads of CSS3 Transitions (Animations).

Demo Buy Now

Screenshots

When it comes to custom WordPress themes design the usual way to go is building on top of a base theme or framework, and there are tons of such themes out there, yet, the problem with such themes is that they are too “basic”, usually lacking a richer and eye-catching design, which leads to time and resources consuming work on both graphics and css to get a professional-looking theme. It is here that a new tool called WordPress Theme Generator comes forward to help; using it’s solid and clear interface you can create a custom theme in no time with more than 1000 predesigned elements at different layout options at your disposal.

WordPress Theme Generator is a versatile and efficient tool to produce custom themes, for it has more than 1000 design elements that you can use, as well as supporting your uploaded designs. On top of that you can download every theme you created with a “full of features” framework, as well as saving them within the interface for later edition; this presents the advantage of up-to-date framework in all of them. For an even faster solution it presents a public themes gallery where hundreds of pre-designed themes can be found along with their layered psd files.

WordPress Theme Generator Main Features

• Over 1000 pre-designed elements
• New design elements added daily
• Change any design aspect with an easy to use interface
• More than 50 preloaded fonts available
• Unlimited sidebars or widget areas
• Save themes for later edition or download
• Download in both WP & HTML/CSS
• Always updated with the latest WP version
• A powerful framework behind
• Check all features

Framework Options

Within the theme you download using WPThemesGenerator there’s a powerful framework:

• Bootstrap Ready (don’t know what bootstrap is?, please take a look)
• Unlimited sidebars: Using the layout tool you can create unlimited sidebars or widget areas. (both horizontal or vertical) And assign them in a page by page basis.
• 4 Sliders: Select between 4 different slider types.
• Custom logo and images: Upload your own personalized logo and slider images.
• Featured slider: Select featured posts and they will appear in your slider. That easy.
• Live edition window: You can decide whether to show a little sidebar in your site homepage (admin only), which allows you to edit aspects of your theme directly from it, like color, textures, etc.
• Galleries page: You can create full featured galleries that come with categories and lightbox ready to use.
• Portfolio & services pages: Easily create a portfolio or a services page (with categories)
• Products Page: Selling your products never was easier, just add your products’ images, prices and they will be displayed in a products page (with categories)
• Testimonials Page: Create testimonials from your users.
• Contact form: A ready to use (spam free) contact form.
• Social icons: Add social icons in seconds
• Create GUI elements: Buttons, frames, lightboxes, quotes, sliders, tabbed content, menus, tooltips, highlights, notice boxes, warnings, and more..
• and much more…

Why would you settle for what’s written here? you can check out the WordPress Theme Generator yourself.

See the WPTheme Generator introduction video, here:

This tool has been created from the same guys behind iconshock and wordpressthemeshock

This is a guest post by Anna Matthews, if you want to guest post on this blog, please contact us.

A logo is one of the most important element that helps to establish a brand or an organization in the market. It in many ways works as a communicator between a company and its targetted customers. Branding is the most important part that works behind the sucess of a company or an organisation. If you are a logo designer and assigned to design logo for your client company you need to be very careful. First you need to understand the purpose, target customers and the requirement of the company and their business. Second you should take care of the budget they draw for the designing job.

On the other hand a client or an organization should also have some ideas on logo designing despite of appointing a logo designer to design the logo of the company oh their behalf. They should at least know the purpose of a logo. First they should understand well the purpose and the type of logo they want. Then only they can hire a professional logo designer or a logo designing firm. Only after that the budget, deadline or the design can be decided.

Should Symbolize Your Business

A logo should always symbolize you and your business. Only a great logo can summarize your entire business within it. People should remember the logo at one go. If they cannot remember the logo it can be said surely that they cannot remember your business or organization. On the designer’s part, the logo should be simple yet catchy. The logo may contain design or infographics but it should clear the name of the brand or the organization. If you take a look at the logos of IBM or Coca cola you can understand how simple yet effective they are to remember. On the other hand a complex logo my look different or better but it does not at all serve the purpose.

Match with The Purpose of Your Business

While designing a logo a designer should always remember that the logo should match the theme and the purpose of the business or the company. A logo represents a company and there should be some elements and the feel which will draw the target audience towards the company. Once a logo designer underestands these things it becomes quite easier for him design the best logo for his clients. If the company represents promotes a class then their logo should contain simple yet classy colors and designs. A designer should try to avoid creating a flashy logo which may not go with the image of the company at all.

Elegant and Memorable

Logo designing is all about creativity and the logo designer should be genius and creative enough to create a logo that is different as well as elegant. Sometimes it becomes difficult to develop a unique logo. But this is the only way you can taste the sucess in the highly competitive market. The logo should be elegant and different. But do not forget the thin line between complex and different. While searching for different and elegant logo logo designers often end up creating a complicated logo which people tend to forget easily.

Timeless

Image source: Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi, Revised Edition

A logo designer should always create such logos that are lasted for years. In short the logo should be eterneal along with its appeal. You should be very careful while choosing colors for the logo. Use of colors changes every day and using bright or shocking colors may end up losing its appeal after a few years. The design of the logo should also be smart enough to be continued over the years. As the logo cannot be changed it should be designed such a way so that it can have eternal appeal.

Creation of a good quality logo may take some. It can take days or months. It takes a lot of discussion between the logo designer and his clients. Sometimes a logo designer require to work on different projects at the same time. But he is expected by everyone to produce the best logo. That is why he is being paid for. It is only possible for a good designer to saatisfy al his clients as well as himself. If the designer keep these factors in mind he can produce such a logo which can be a boom for both the organization or the brand and of course for his career.

About the Author!

Anna Matthews, an associate writer from Logo Design Team. She is an expertise writer for writing articles related to Logo Design, Logo Reviews and anything that is related to this niche. Her best work can be find here : Logo Design Portfolio.

Do you have a cool design work? Like past client projects, free templates, or the other portfolio. Why don’t you promote it for free and get some traffic? To attract some potential clients or more sales.
Become active in the forums, leave comments on the blog and let visitors to your own website know about your portfolio is one of the strategy. But to more engage the readers to your portfolio… the best strategy is by submitting your portfolio to specific design site.

PsdBucket.com aims to deliver high quality resources for graphic and web designers as well as a daily dose of inspiration. Anyone can submit their work for showcasing and consideration.

How to Submit?

To start submitting your designs, simply create an account, edit your info and you are ready to show to the world your awesome work. Here the 3 simple steps:

Step 1. Create an Account

On PsdBucket homepage, click “Signup Today and start uploading” button, you’ll go to signup page

Fill with the form and click “Register”. Then they will send your username and password via your email.

Step 2. Login

Go to psdbucket login page and fill with your username and password that they sent to your email.

Step 3. Start to submit

After login, you’ll go to psdbucket dashboard page.

You can start by editing your profile

Now you’re ready to submit your design work.

Get the Inspiration

PsdBucket.com not only give the easy way to submit your design work, but they also provide high quality resources for graphic and web designers as well as a daily dose of your inspiration.

Here are the features that we like from PsdBucket in finding the inspiration:

1. Easy to navigation

In the header, please hover the “Designs” menu. And you can choose in their 17 menus, to start find inspiration.

They also provide image sort function, based “Most Viewed, Popular on Twitter, and Latest Work”. This feature is very interesting.

2. Browse by Color

On the top left sidebar you can find “browse by color” and click one color

You can see the inspiration based the color that you’ve choose. If you want to find the specific color, you can found PsdBucket also provide and amazing color tools.

3. Related image

If you click one of the design work, you can find PsdBucket provide related image by category and by the designer.

Conclusion

We found, PsdBucket.com give many features, that will make your work is easier in promoting your work and finding inspiration. Not only that, if you are a business owner and in finding a designer for your business PsdBucket have a designer list page. You also can sort designers by their profession or by country.

If you like with PsdBucket.com, don’t forget to follow them on twitter and become their fan on Facebook.

How do you think about PsdBucket.com? Do you have any experience with them? Please share with us in the comment below. Enjoy!

Have a logo is must when it comes to promotion of your busines. And a strong brand in your logo, can communicate your business vision to the customers. Today we have a collection of 40 hand based logos, hands in logo design have many different meanings, it can means hope, touching, caring, and usually related with emotional based feelings.

We hope this our handpicked logo collection, can help you to find some great inspiration for your logo designs.

Do you have another great logos? Which logos that you love? We would love to hear your thoughts so please comment below

The other way to promote your business is by using Posters. It’s the old way but still very important in your brand marketing strategy.
A poster is a printed based design and typically include both textual and graphic elements, or one of them – graphic only/text only. However, you can use only type to create breath-taking designs. And in fact, many graphic designers and artists take exactly this route to communicate their ideas through their works.

In this article, we have 23 High Quality Typographic Poster Design Tutorials. Some are intermediate and the other are very advanced but you’ll learn some typography techniques to help you in designing your own posters.

by Chris Spooner

by Ionut Ciursa

by Ben Merckx

by Jesse Hora Dot Com

by Jo Gulliver

by Sebastiano

by Alex Beltechi

by Tyler

by Chris Spooner

by Tomas Laurinavicius

by Alex Beltechi

by Pedro Vilas-Boas and Cátia Oliveira

by Niranth M

by Jonathan Wong

by silentalibi

by Richie

by Chris Spooner

by GoMediaZine

by Emiliano Suárez

by Constantin Potorac

by Sebastiano

by Xin Kun

by Computer Arts

Good news! Today, 1800Postcards.com have partnered with us to give a cool giveaway. In this giveaway, 1800Postcards is offering you the opportunity to win 1000 custom business cards! Read more for details and how you can get a chance win this giveaway contest.

More About 1800Postcards

So why trust 1800Postcards.com with your design work?

1800Postcards.com is the retail branch of Circle Press, a high-end commercial printing firm with a roster of Fortune 100 clients that includes Dior, Tiffany, Disney, American Express, Broadway Shows and most of the world’s leading brands. These companies demand nothing but the best in quality. To be specific, a quality standard called “G7”, which is only granted to printing firms that meet a very strict set of best practices and production quality. These clients sit with pre-press, have color proofs printed for spot color matching, they come in when the job is printed to make color adjustments and watch it run on the press to see the final results, the whole nine yards. They also pay tens of thousands of dollars for this type of service level.

1800Postcards produces your print work in the same facilities, with the same press-men and production staff, and adheres to the same quality standards as high-end commercial jobs. The only difference is that your job is “gang printed” or run together with other 1800Postcard clients, which is the secret of every online printing company and why they can be so cheap in pricing. However, 1800Postcards.com just brought it up to an almost unreasonable level of quality

But what if you don’t need business cards? Well they’re capable of more than just business card printing. They offer brochures, postcards, flyers, posters, banners, stickers and pretty much any custom work your creative mind can imagine.

Bottom line, the print results are unbelievable… no one in the online printing space comes even close to this quality and attention to detail. You can see it yourself by requesting free samples @ 1800Postcards.com/freesamples.

The Prize

1000 free Business cards are ready for you, 3 lucky iBrandStudio readers.

How to Win

Winning the 1000 Free Custom Business Cards is easy. Just click on the “Participate” widget below and leaving a brief comment on this post tell why you should win.
Here the steps:

• Step 1
  Participate by Clicking on the Link and Entering Your Info, here: http://www.1800postcards.com/widget/designergiveaway.aspx?giveaway=102
• Step 2
  Leave a comment telling us why you should win.
• Step 3
  If you tweet @1800Postcards a pic of your finished product you will receive 10% off your next order!

The contest will run for a week, and the 3 winners will be announce on Saturday May 12, 2012. Only US residents are eligible.

Good luck to everyone!

This is a guest post by Matt Powers, if you want to guest post on this blog, please contact us.

There is a misconception when it comes to what a brand really is. It’s not just the Golden Arches of McDonalds, the Nike Swoosh, or Apple’s the half-eaten piece of fruit. A brand is more than just a logo, color scheme and slogan. It is the statement of your company.

McDonalds’ brand tries to convey good food, fast, and at the lowest possible price. Nike prides themselves on being the shoe/clothing company of the world’s finest athletes and Apple is innovative, easy and the best looking products in technology.

For entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses without a large team of marketing professionals to establish what is and is NOT good for a company, establishing a brand can be a difficult task. There are some key brand strategies you should implement when developing a brand for your company.

Strategy #1: Have a Plan

First things first, you have to develop a plan of attack before employing any other strategies. What is your brand trying to accomplish? We all aren’t out to sell products. Maybe you run an online blog and you are looking for reads and subscriptions to increase advertising on the site. Others may be looking to sell their services like landscaping, computer repair or construction. Make a clear statement of what your brand is trying to do.

Who is your target audience? Don’t say everyone. Nike doesn’t target everyone, they target athletes. Unless you’re coming out with the next Google, your demographic isn’t “everyone”. The answer will become clearer over time, but you should have a good idea of what type of people you are looking to reach. If you are a local business there is no need to chase leads across the country. The time and effort it may take to snatch up an extra client won’t be worth the money.

What is the end goal? This should be the easy part, conversions. How you get there depends on how you execute the next steps.

Strategy #2: Define Your Brand

Your brand should help compliment what your company stands for. Create a persona for your brand. Describe its personality, positioning statements and develop a solid backstory. These should all stay consistent with what your company believes in.

Do you work in a fun, relaxed work environment? Stay true to that with your branding efforts. Whatever stance you take, these attributes should stand pat throughout your other advertising/marketing campaigns.

Zappos is known for being a fun company, with great employee culture and customer service; and that branding truly comes across in all their marketing and advertising. When defining your brand and what you want to emphasize, stay in line with who you really are.

Strategy #3: Don’t be Afraid to Copy

Establish your competition. Your company isn’t fighting for supremacy with every other business in the world. Your efforts might not even be to go against the top of your niche/industry. Find where you rank and which companies you should consider to be your closest competitors.

Check to see how they embrace their brand. Recognize what they are doing and see how you can improve on what they are doing. We don’t have to be completely original in how we do business. We are all just trying to one up each other in all reality.

Strategy #4: Embrace Social Media

Embracing social media is becoming bigger and more important, especially for online businesses. ‘Liking’, ‘tweeting’, ‘+1’s’ and social sharing now have a larger impact on your rankings in the search engines.

Google+ and Facebook have just given a facelift to the layouts of their brand pages to make them more attractive to businesses. Large cover art photos, more descriptive histories, improved picture galleries and more customization gives companies an excellent opportunity to better show off their brands.

Twitter is great way to give your brand a voice. Old Spice does a great job embracing their brand on twitter taking on the personality of their new spokesperson Terry Crews.

Strategy #5: Measure the Effectiveness

Great, you’ve taken all the appropriate steps and implemented all the key factors into your brand strategy. That’s all well and good, but doesn’t necessarily equal success…at least not immediately. There is still work to be done.

Test to measure the effectiveness of your strategy. Ask questions, poll your customers, clients, vendors and employees to see if they have the same impressions. Review your results and make the appropriate changes. This doesn’t mean you have to go back to the drawing board if you don’t see the results you desired. Small subtle changes may be all it takes to make the right impression and finally see an increase in conversions.

About the Author!

Matt Powers is an Internet Marketer at Blue Soda Promo, an online promotional products company. BSP imprints logos on items like custom tote bags, polo shirts, koozies, sunglasses and stress balls at ridiculously low prices. We make your brand POP!