Business Card
J D Sutcliffe
Architectural Stonework & Carving. Two sides, 85 × 55 mm, print-ready. Choose a version below to preview both faces, or download the print-ready PDF.
Version 2
Standard font, enhanced designContact on front, awards on back — standard type size.
Why it looks like this
- The front carries everything that matters. Name, discipline and all the contact details sit on the front, so a single glance is enough. The back is complementary — the fuller description, the awards and the portfolio code — for anyone who turns the card over.
- The lettering is the trade. The face is Cinzel — Roman inscriptional capitals, the letterform a banker mason actually cuts. It is already on the website, so the card follows the identity rather than replacing it.
- The card is a piece of stone. Warm limestone ground and a weathered slate ink, rather than the white-and-black most trade cards default to. It should feel quarried, not printed.
- The rule under the name is a section through a V-cut — two hairlines with a gap, which is what an incised line looks like edge-on.
- Almost no colour. One restrained bronze for the job title. Conservation work sells on restraint, and a loud card would argue against the service.
- Awards earn their place on the back. Three credentials now sit under the description — Natural Stone Awards 2022 (Big Ben), QEST Scholar 2017 and Rome Scholar 2016. Held to three and set small, so they read as quiet authority rather than a list. The full set of awards lives on the website.
Print specification
- Trim
- 85 × 55 mm — UK standard, fits every printer worth using
- Artboard
- 91 × 61 mm with 3 mm bleed all round
- Safe margin
- Everything sits at least 9 mm from the edge — comfortably clear
- Format
- PDF/X-1a:2001, DeviceCMYK, no transparency, boxes and output intent set
- Ink coverage
- Peaks at 294%, averages 20–27% — a light card is cheap to print and will not scuff
- Resolution
- Composited at 900 dpi
- Stock
- Uncoated, 350–400 gsm. See the note below.
Ask the printer about a deboss
This design is asking to be pressed into the paper. A blind deboss on the surname — no ink, just the impression — would make the card behave exactly like carved stone, catching light on the edges of the letters. On uncoated card it costs a little more and it is the single change that would take this from good to memorable. Letterpress achieves the same thing.
Checked, not assumed
The QR was decoded back out of the finished CMYK file, not just from the generator — down to a 450 px-wide image of the whole card, far coarser than any phone camera. It returns stonemasonjohn.com.
The file also passes the structural checks: PDF 1.3, CMYK only, no stray RGB, no live transparency, one TrimBox and one BleedBox per page, and every cross-reference offset landing where it should. That is what a printer's preflight looks for.
Before it prints
- Check every character. Phone, email and web were taken from the website — worth confirming they are still the ones John wants on a card that lasts a year.
- The email is a Yahoo address. Since he owns stonemasonjohn.com, something like john@stonemasonjohn.com would look considerably more established to a conservation officer or an architect. Free to set up, and the card is the reason to do it.
- Awards now on the back. Three credentials — Natural Stone Awards 2022 (Big Ben), QEST Scholar 2017 and Rome Scholar 2016 — sit under the description on the back. This is the kind of thing that wins listed-building work. If there are further accreditations worth adding — a lettering or conservation body, CSCS, anything heritage-specific — let me know and I'll fit them in.
- The output intent is provisional. If any further changes are required please get in touch at info@xsoftlimited.com.
