I have a friend who aspires to be a coach in D1 basketball. Currently, he is early in his career and looking to create a solid network. As I spoke with him, I realized that he has a very good potential client base already, but needs to work on developing his personal brand. I thought the best first step towards that would be to have a memorable and unique business card that he can give to people he meets at his current coaching jobs.
To start off, I asked him for an image of him in a basketball setting. Using that image, I drew a simplistic outline of him. We were aiming for a minimalistic look.
After drawing this up, I began to iterate a few different concepts of what the business card might look like. At first, I had a koi fish included on the card, because he loves them. I realized, however, that it is an irrelevant detail about him and while it looks pretty on the card, it distracts from the main focus of the business card.
I got rid of the koi fish and got rid of the dual color concept, because I felt that it was taking away from the simplistic aspect of the card. I went back to brainstorming and decided I was adding too much when I needed to stick to the core of what we are trying to display here - my friend and his interest in basketball. I got rid of the elements that would distract from these main ideas and added in a basketball. I also added a small splash of color, which reflected the colors of the teams he currently coaches.
This is the current working concept we have, but I am still working to improve the card based on his preferences.