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