Earlier this week I asked you, my readers, to suggest possible future themes that I should cover in the blog. One of the suggestions received was “business card basics” and it came at a very good time as I have been in the midst of redesigning my own business card.

What do you typically find on a business card? Contact information! Of course it has traditionally been spelled out for humans to read. It would be crazy not to include the information in a human readable form.

Yet there are many people these days who store contacts electronically in their phones. For that reason, I think you should consider including a QR Code (such as the one at right) that can store your contact information in a form readable by smartphones. That’s exactly what I’m doing on my redesigned card. In fact, go ahead and scan the code I’ve included here in the blog as it has my contact information. Go ahead and snap a picture of it and add me to your contact list.

Yes, a code like this does take up a good amount of valuable space on a card. My upcoming card will be a 2-sided design and I’m putting the QR Code on the back of the card along with my areas of expertise. How do you create a QR Code? I used the QR Codes Docker for CorelDRAW. Is there something new that you feel is essential on redesigned business cards? Tell us about it in a comment!