Little Pieces of Paper Meaning So Much

A lot of thought goes into business cards.

I liked my old one… the goats.

However, after receiving some cards lately have come to three conclusions:

1) It’s rare to find 3D modelers with attractive business cards. Well, except those who are using professionally designed company cards. Even the programmer’s fear of touching the design aspect of things keeps it classic – for the most part.

2) I really should tweak mine. In fact, I should just retire it.

3) I need to pick words like the way you pair wine with cheese.

This process has plagued my brain for a bit and probably took me two weeks to come up with something I was happy with. I had several designs I came up with, one that came to 99% completion before I gave it “the mouth wiggle” and decided I liked it but I should change the path that I am going. Oddly enough it was not until today (when I knew I needed to get the order out or I was not going to see it in time for GDC) that something “cardppropriate” came to my brain.

Because I want to start in the middle, let me introduce the one rejected as a card design.

Now, it’s an odd format for a reason. I was 95% positive I wanted to go the Moo Mini Card route. Link for those unfamiliar: http://www.moo.com/products/minicards.php

When I joined the paid version of Flickr, they offered me a free sample of the mini cards. What they sent back were these awesomely fun little cards that I had put my name and email address on. I fell in love. Cute, wonderful color, matte, and they felt great. They really did win me over in the quality department. So much so that a year later I was still convinced (mostly), that these little guys were it.

So I decided to start designing around the widescreen format.

Fast forward endless mutterings to myself later, when I had it up on the site and I was adjusting the position, a little voice in my head said no. I argued that I had put all this work in and I like the bird tree and I thought it was clever - but that other part of me made a better argument.

Of all the people I hand the card to, I’m going to be the one most impressed with the cleverness and that doesn’t seem to make much sense, does it? And this was what I was dedicating an entire side of the card to.

So a deep sigh later, it was back to the drawing tablet.

Now, I COULD post the new design up here – but I will not. If anyone actually reads this, you will need to find me at either GDC (or Beer Wednesdays) and request one. I will gladly exchange cards and you can tell me whether I was right or wrong. My email address is not too hard to find *cough*profile*cough* and if you want to meet up, let me know.

Couple of things I will share…

1) I still went with Moo.
2) I picked the recycled ones.
3) I finally figured out a good way to display my signature initials.