Hand-Made Calling Cards

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

For a while, I have wanted "business cards" that are more casual than business cards. It seems that most of the people that I want to give cards to are folks that are a friend-of-a-friend folks that I meet in coffee shops, or family, or people I happen to line up next to at conferences.

These people don't care about my job title or my fax number! Nor do very many people in my corner of the world correspond via snail mail. What I want is a card that expresses something about the way I approach life, reminds folks of my name, and sends them to my blog if they want to find out more about me or my company. More "calling card" than "business card."

On a few separate occasions over the past weeks, colleages have said that I take an artisan approach to business. I like this and have been embracing my inner artisan, looking for ways to be non-corporate while focusing on quality and detail.

For the cards, I have decided to try rubber stamping them. I love the look of hand screen-printed posters and letterpress cards. I thought I might be able to get a similar look at a cheaper price using stamps.

I started by designing a layout in Apple's Keynote (my favorite quick-layout tool) and then refined the design in Adobe Illustrator. I wanted a design that could be different for every card, so it has two pieces, the bee from my logo and a block with my name and blog address.

I ordered rubber stamp versions of the design elements from Simon's Stamps. You can upload a high-resolution black and white image to their site and they'll send you a stamp in a few days. Pretty cool, and inexpensive too. The two stamps cost under $30 including shipping.

Currently I am working out the paper and color options. I bought a bunch of different single sheets from a neighborhood craft store as well as a few different colors of stamp pads. I haven't found the perfect combo yet, but I am getting close. Some of the papers that I like don't work well with the ink, the yellow is too light and the blue was a syrupy texture that didn't show enough detail to easily read the URL. Based on my experiments, I am going to go back to the store this evening and buy another round of supplies.

I'll post updates as I move toward the ultimate calling card!

Labels: business card, calling card, design, stamping