I’m a fan on Studio on Fire, and they’ve helped me print some cards in the past. This is one of their self-promotional cards, illustrating, in this case, how they can die-cut into strange shapes, apply type in a circle, and press blind patterns. All very cool.

Even though I smirked at this, I’m still not a huge fan of ninja star business cards, as you know.

Freelance graphic designer/art director PIM has a clever idea for how to prime the referral machine — have you business card multiply itself. A perforated line helps ripability.

Pretty self-explanatory, but with directions. Never hurts to walk people through a supposedly understood procedure.

The only problem I can spot — PIM is a stupid name. Is that initials? The name of a company? See, I’ve already thought about it too much.

The card from Anthem seems rather straightforward. It’s white, with black text. All good. I questioned why the back was nothing but an exclamation mark, and the folks from Anthem couldn’t give a solid answer.

But they did show me a clever use of the cards, taking the exclamation mark as a sort of manga-style emoticon. Useful when a flailing client is on the line, or when deadlines loom.

The cards belonging to the in-house team at Campbell’s Soup aren’t terribly thrilling. A logo, lots of white space, the bare necessities.

But I found it rather cute that they have a product photo on the back. Look at that jar, all bold and solitary. Good stuff.

That is all.

Last month, I collected my weight in business cards at the FUSE Conference in Chicago. Many of them were dull corporate nonsense, but the gold medal of exceptional cards went to the boys from Brooklyn-based Chapps Malina.

The card is black, made of some strange sort of suede-like, rubber-like finish. The text on the front seems to be gloss stamp, black-on-black.

And the back is silver ink letterpress. Very lusty indeed.

If you have ‘wood’ in your name, it’s a great excuse to have a card made of wood.

Actually, this particular material would make for a nice card for anyone. I enjoy it. Cardsofwood.com, if you’re interested.

I rather like the simplicity of this card. Clean, to the point, decent typography in the logo.

The point of interest is clearly in how the embossed logo is also shaded, to exaggerate the 3D effect. Makes the otherwise dull sphere in the logo seem unique.

And the back, with its awkward strapline. Typical marketing. I think that’s what they do.

A few weeks ago I met the folks from Carrot Creative in Brooklyn. The team has a little scheme going wherein they create avatars in the same style. And then they plaster all the social networks and whatnot with the same avatar, thus creating and reinforcing a sort of brand icon. You know how it goes.

Strangely, though, the icons don’t appear on the actual site, which features actual photos instead.

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!

Here is the card for Cunning, a hard-to-define agency based in London and New York. The funny thing about Cunning is that they don’t have a standard brand identity or logo. It ever changes with the next block.

This card is obviously from my pal Izzie Zahorian, who actually no longer works there. But as we can see, it’s a thin sheet of frosty plastic. I’m not crazy about the dimensions, which are a little more European than I am used to.

Here we have a case study in resourcefulness, as Erica Heinz, designer [and yoga teacher], uses engraved artwork of yesteryear for her present day business card. Old engravings and artwork from previous centuries are in the public domain, so are therefore free for folks to use. While a designer may be pressured to do all his/her own artwork, I don’t mind the recycling of key art like this.

This card is letterpressed, which is impressive that they could achieve such fine detail with letterpress. No idea on printing credits or paper stocks.

I am indeed surprised that Paul Rand, of the most famous and prolific graphic designers ever, has such a starkly spartan business card. Surely, this was intentional. Right?

via amassblog »

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?

Recently, I met Kyle, a fine young man from Sterling Brands. I admired his card, with its two-colour engraving, most especially apparent in the company’s logo.

And then I flipped the card and remarked on the simple cleverness on the reverse.

Where the reverse side of an engraved card is usually not suitable for full use, Sterling have listed the locations. Except they’re not listed, they’re mapped.

“I bet most people don’t get it, do they?” I quipped.
“Nope, they think it’s a mistake.” Kyle replied.

(so, is engraving the new letterpress? That’s what they’re saying.)

In conclusion, not a brilliant card, but the engraving is tasteful, and the map is very clever and subtle.

Sorry for the shitty photos.

While I can enjoy the finely crafted, precise, and technologically awesome card, I have just as much love for low-tech printing. Here, the folks at Sassen Design created a rubber stamp to create their cards. Each one is slightly different, each one has a bit of the hand-crafted touch.

via FPO »