My New Friendly Business Card

Submitted by Vishal on Thu, 2010/03/11 - 3:57pm

My new hand-cut, self-designed, friendly business cards

There's nothing like a small stack of freshly cut business cards. I have so far, in my eight-year-old(!) design career, had about five or six designs for my business card. I change them about every year or so, and that's not just to keep them fresh and interesting (mostly to me) but because I've never printed more than twenty or thirty of any one design.

No, there is no pack of five hundred or one thousand little rectangles of card stock with my name on it sitting around gathering dust. I take my design with crop marks to an ordinary copy shop and get a page or two (holding eight to ten cards each) printed on their good laser printer with card stock (250 gsm). It's cheap, effective, and means I don't have to be stuck to a single design for long.

This is a good thing for a small business or freelancer, as we don't have the kinds of numbers of clients that a person in an agency might field. If I'm not going to meet more than a dozen or two potential clients a year, why bother with hundreds of cards?

It's also a lot of fun to come home and cut them up (use adult supervision, kids!). You always feel that that 250 gsm paper is too floppy, but once cut into individual shapes believe me, they behave and feel just like any normal business card should.

This year's business card for Primordial Soop (the little design monster my brother & I run) turned out to be a bit strange. I've wanted to put something other than the usual biz card staples of name, contact and services offered, and came up with a bit of conversation. I hope you like it.

V

Comments

Very nice

Submitted by Sudhamshu on Thu, 2010/03/11 - 5:22pm.

I liked the design. It has the right amount of attraction! Very apt for someone who is selling his creativity. As for the method of making the cards, I've done the same thing for my boss a few times. For 'special' probable customers, I do go & get about 24 cards printed on one sheet of paper and then sit & start slicing! Unfortunately, not all of them are the same dimensions though. But as nobody is given 2 cards, no one knows!
Great job & good luck :)

Thank you! The slightly

Submitted by Vishal on Fri, 2010/03/12 - 8:30pm.

Thank you! The slightly uneven result is quite fun; I got a cheap little cutting board (the blue gird the cards are on) so this time's turned out more even than usual, but there's always minute variations. But as you say, nobody's going to know! :)

I love IT!!

Submitted by Amit Suvarna on Fri, 2010/03/12 - 9:38am.

I too got some cards printed. unfortunately the digital prints didnt come out as expected but i think they get their job done ok.

I think i should put up a photo of the VC as well. :)

You definitely should put up

Submitted by Vishal on Fri, 2010/03/12 - 8:32pm.

You definitely should put up a photo of it -- that's a good design!

And do try a few different print shops out. Even we've settled on one after trying out a few here and there. This one's a bit more expensive but the results are consistent. And after a while you do start to work within the limitations of the laser printer (there will be aliasing on very fine curved lines, for instance).

Nice!

Submitted by Aishwarya on Fri, 2010/03/12 - 12:09pm.

These are great :)

Also, the internet now knows the first half of your phone number.

Thank you! And the internet

Submitted by Vishal on Fri, 2010/03/12 - 8:35pm.

Thank you! And the internet now knows that I have a UAE mobile number (+97150 is the international dialing code). My actual phone number is carefully hidden behind a sharp implement. Muhahaha, etc.

Why no love for the capital letters?

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 2010/03/17 - 5:51pm.

This is a query, not the start of an argument. I abandon capital letters whenever possible (take that, German!) and am always looking for reasons to give my colleagues for why I try to take away theirs when I'm editing their work.

Well there isn't any

Submitted by Vishal on Wed, 2010/03/17 - 7:37pm.

Well there isn't any specific rule for it, but the notion is generally that sans-serif fonts are less 'friendly' looking than serifed ones, and that all small letters look less intimidating -- less formal, actually -- than the usual way. You will note that the rest of the info, the logo and the actual name etc are in conventional grammar.

The lack of capitals breaks the formality of the statement. It's almost like a whisper or a statement made discreetly, rather than a proclamation (I mentioned something about an old advertising maxim stating that it should seem to your audience that you are talking to them individually, personally. This concept can be conveyed even through the magic of grammar-breaking typecraftery).

Or at least that's the crap I came up with to explain it right now. :P

PS Typecraftery!

Apparently I am determined to be secretive on your site.

Submitted by Beth on Sat, 2010/03/20 - 8:29pm.

But it's just because I forget to put my name in the form.

I'm going to have to ask people what their emotional state is after reading things with capital letters. It's never occurred to me that capital letters might be thought of as less friendly. I personally find them more formal, which is why I don't use them in situations like the beginning of bulleted list items in a non-formal publication (if the list items are not sentences, that is).

And now I'll have to spend the rest of the day wondering if my whispers have capital letters. Gee thanks, Vishal.