In light of a ton of opportunity to meet amazing new people during the next two weeks, I decided it was high time I got new business cards printed for myself. However I wanted to do things a bit differently.
Inspiration
Long time ago in 2009, I had come across this business card from Inayaili de León. You can guess it's impact by the sheer fact that I remember it till this day, despite having seen a ton of really amazing business cards. It was the simplest business card I had ever seen and yet it made perfect sense to me. This time I did not want a business card that was cramped with all kind of information nobody ever cared about. This time I wanted a simple way for people to recall my name and if they needed a dead simple way to contact me.
Why Twitter?
It is probably the simplest place to know everything about me. My bio will give you a glimpse of who I am and link to my website. You can get in touch with me right on Twitter which is honestly my most preferred medium of quick communication.
Design and Printing
The typeface used is Chaparral Pro from Adobe. My ideal preference would have been Skolar but I don't happen to own the font, hence the fallback. The red used is Tangerine, Pantone 2012 color of the year. For printing purposes, the color actually used was this one. The paper used is Cranes Lettra, Pearl in 220# with red colored edge.
Going for letterpress was an obvious choice. I chose to go with The Mandate Press, based on countless positive recommendations on Dribbble. Would definitely be going back to these guys again in future. Given my zero experience in printing, leave alone letterpress, they were very patient with me.
Saying Hello and making a personal connection
I had initially wanted the back side of the card to be a blind press with Eunoia and Pulse logo but decided against it. I felt it was the perfect opportunity to make the card more about the personal connection than sheer networking. So for every person I hand out the card to, I will be adding handwritten notes on the back side so that they may remember me. Also the hidden benefit of writing a note, besides the smile it leaves when the person reads it anytime in future, is the fact that in the process of writing the note, you also write their name thus making it hard to forget them. I am calling these "Hello Cards"!
Also check out a few other photos from the mini photoshoot of the cards on Flickr.