The Best of Business Card Design Five, to be exact, by Cheryl Dangel Cullen. The fifth book in a series out of what I think is currently 7 books. I usually call this type of book the “eye candy for designers” book. It showcases business card designs from all around the world, in a total of almost 200 pages, in full-color and is laid out in an interesting manner. There is a little to no text and you receive page after page of colorful business card designs from leading creative agencies from around the world.

What you get out of the book is a great resource for ideas, a visual resource if you ever need to design a business card or even need ideas to know what to shop for. This type of book is perfect for the random passerby who wants a business card but is not sure what to get. Better yet, wouldn’t it be great if this book was sold near the business section instead of just within the confines of the design realm? People, not the designer folk, often use their friends’ cards or local businesses as resources for business card design ideas. What if those people used this book as inspiration for their own cards? Imagine getting that client who actually wants you to design a business card similar to the ones showcased in the book because the client saw what was possible and not what they were comfortable with. So if you design, and you have clients who want business cards, why not leave this book on the table beside the chair they will sit on while waiting for you? It’s a passive aggressive tactic. The client has nothing else to do while they wait five minutes for your meeting and are likely to pick up just about anything you lay on that table. In your meeting about their business card they are more likely to say “hey, I was browsing the business card book on the coffee table and I noticed a design that jumped out at me…”

What you don’t receive out of the book are explanations in the choices made by the contributors. You may not know why they chose to die cut the card or choose an abnormal shape because it may not be apparent to you. You will not receive that handy paragraph that describes to you the client and what the designer was thinking. Also, you won’t find any traditional business cards (okay, maybe one or two our of the entire 7 book collection). I could not find one traditional, black and white, text only business card design in the whole book. No, designing text only or a black and white card with a black and white logo may not be creative but it’s a design job that holds a lot of pressure and it’s the number one type of printed business card. At such simplicity, layout and paper become so crucial. It would have been nice to have seen one of those traditional designs in the book for inspiration of how to do traditional well. Let’s face it, beginning designers need help doing traditional well before they branch out into the creative, why not give them examples of what that looks like?

I guess you’re wondering what I think. Well, usually I would state 5-10 things that you will learn out of this book and rant on about something or another. You may not learn anything out of this book. In fact, if you buy this book please note that the main reason you should be doing so is to use it as a reference for ideas. If you don’t need a reference for ideas, or have another one of these books in this series and hardly ever touch it, don’t buy this one or another one. Buy one out of the whole series if you need a reference and do not have one yet. Go to your local bookshop and browse the books in the series, because more than likely the bookstore will carry at least two or three out of the entire series and you can at least choose the one book with that amazing card design in it you love. For me, I have yet to have gotten a client who would ever want a design similar to the ones showcased in this book. I think the cost to print them would be outrageous, I think most clients want something that demands more respect, and I think a lot of people would be less likely to keep some of these cards over a traditional one. But I am going to keep this book on my shelf and shuffle through its pages once in a while in hopes that I someday receive the client who wants something new. I think you should also have at least one of these references on your shelf if you design anything in the stationary realm. Make sure to leave it on that coffee table too.

Buy it on Amazon.com - They rated it 4 out of 5 stars and have “search inside” available for this book.