3D cards are a touchy subject — they can be clever, and they can easily go to far. I like this card from TAM Cargo, because it folds flat to serve as a conventional card. That way, if you have no patience to carry around a miniature shipping box in your wallet, you don’t have to.
Designed by Y&R São Paulo
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An electronics engineer whose business card is not only an actual circuit board, but it’s a USB thumb drive. Useful, yet bulky. I’m afraid this isn’t the first one of these I’ve seen, and thus, I’m not terribly impressed.
Bold, though, because this has to cost a pretty penny.
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This design for a dog tag-style card was sent in by Christofer Johnson of Luice Design. Copyright issues aside, I think the US Army eagle crest makes an appropriate edition for these.
The tags are laser etched and die cut, on stainless steel. Corners are rounded so as to avoid the slicing of fingers!
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Don’t say it’s not unique. Jessica Delfino, comedienne and musician, has produced whistles that serve two purposes: they ward off would-be rapists and help serve as business cards. I mean, how many people have whistles as business cards? For that matter, how many people are promoting themselves on the no-rape platform?
What better way to promote your fabrication business than with a small machine disguised as a business card. In this case, it’s probably not the most practical device, but we have to admire the novelty of it. Right?
Cardnetics is the company behind this craziness, and apparently this is what they do.
]]>At first, it looks like a regular card. The typography is whimsical but with a sense of sophistication. There are elements of hand-crafted goodness, and a bit of stampy action.
And then they stand up and become something else entirely.
Here’s a close-up of the mechanism, so to speak.
This isn’t the first pop-up card featured on the site. Older ones are here and here, to start.
What do we think, are pop-up cards a pleasant surprise in the day-to-day of card design, or an eye-rolling act of creative half-rebellion?
Also, what do you think about a server hosting company that made it possible to store electronic business cards?
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Egil Paulsen is a Oslo, Norway-based painted and computer artist. So it is fitting that his card folds out to stand itself up as an easel. Pretty self explanatory, and well executed. I want one of these one my desk.
via Creattica »
AR Business Card from James Alliban on Vimeo.
No denying that this card is in a category by itself. The clever use of Augmented Reality in everyday applications, like business cards, it only going to grow in the near future. I, for one, welcome our new electronic disembodied overlords.
via Josh Spear »
PS. if you’re curious about Augmented Reality, read the entry on How Stuff Works »
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OK, technically this isn’t a card like you might hand out to someone, but Hack A Day has featured a lengthy, and geeky, article on how to build a functioning web server on a circuit board the size of a business card! Bloody hell.
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Pretty awesome.
via Core 77 »
Rubber stamps can create a business card out of just about anything. Appropriate if you’re in the business of recycling, reclaimed materials, or anything eco-conscious.
via Direct Daily via Quipsologies »
The winner was a card that folds up to become a pinhole camera. Other notables include 3D glasses, and a tea bag holding contraption.
While the results show creativity, I challenge the need for business cards to double as some more functional object. Is the world really that short of pinhole cameras?
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While not normally a fan of 3D cards, I do have a soft spot for packaging. These cards from Niels en Pascal straddle that line. These also fall into that category of face cards, although viewed through a cartoony lens.
Contact information is featured on the bottom of the paper toy doll guy thing, but mainly these cards are aimed at bringing a spot of humour to a lifeless desk. Still, we have to look at context and realise that if Niels weren’t a graphic and web designer, these would probably be dreadfully inappropriate.
The flattened cutout of the cards.
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Perhaps I’m a fancy-pants east-coast liberal who prefers lattes to processed meat, but I’m afraid I am not amused by Meatcards.com, a service that will laser etch a design into a slab of beef jerky.
The trouble here is two-fold. First, and most obviously, an edible card means that people won’t be keeping your card on file — they’ll eat it and forget about it. And with it, your contact info. Second, you’re bound to gross out at least some people. I can imagine a potential scuffle with a militant vegetarian, but even some meat-eating folks don’t want to carry around an unwrapped piece of food in their pocket.
via Dickie Adams and Slashfood »
Normally, 3D cards are annoying, especially when they don’t reduce to the conventional format, but in this case it makes a little bit of sense. Paul Adams is an industrial designer who apparently specialises in chair design.
Designed by Department of Montréal.
via OK Great »