The front of the card is excellent (Guy Kawasaki), but I hate the back. In my mind, the most important part, after the name, is how to actually contact you. On Guy's card, that info just blends in with his three websites (seriously, he needs to put all three?). I like the simplicity, but my experience with all black business cards has been that it really sucks you can't write on them.
I'm such a whore for black business cards. My personal business/freelance business card is black but it's also matte (http://www.flickr.com/photos/chix0r/1409350187/), and half of one side is not black. It's entirely possible to write on it..I haven't had many problems with that, and even if you write on the black part, you can usually read most pen/pencil marks on it. In the event you can't read it straight on, tilting at an angle usually does the trick.
Some of mine are braille embossed though, but the people I give those to usually don't need to write anything on it.
It's the glossy black ones that are more annoying to me.
If you've designed a business card for yourself, here's a tip: Give the card to your dad!
If your dad's anything like mine - over 50 and suffering from the torments of age - he won't be able to read your type without squinting through his glasses. He won't get the subtle reference you made in the graphics. And he definitely won't be able to figure out what your phone number is.
Thing is.. many of the people with the money, the power, and the NEED for business cards are those older people with fading eyesight! Do you really think some 20-something upstart needs to see business cards? We've got e-mail, text messaging, and iPhones for that! Business cards are for a wider, more general audience.. so unless you run an avant-garde design agency, design your cards with that general audience in mind.
The consensus from the last thread about the best place to get prints was http://www.overnightprints.com/. They do rounded corners on business cards which is deliciously web 2.0. Make sure to google for a coupon code.
Very cool. How well does the back (280 North logo on what looks like a road) print out?
This is going to sound trivial, but to me, something about the text in the top-right corner on the white side seems off. I think the colors are too dark compared to what you have on the other side.
It might just be my monitor or the fact that they aren't in print to me. Otherwise, I really like the simplicity of the design. Very straight forward and too the point, which is good (and the big print also makes it easier to read).
Am I really so old? The black back/front just does not work for me. I know I don't write on cards folks give me as much as I used to, but I still do at times and being able to is a big plus. Not being able to make a quick note because I forgot my white paint marker is just plain less smart then something I can write on with just about any pen/pencil/bloody finger/greasy stick I can find.
And another creative site I'd recommend checking out is http://www.moo.com/ -- they've got a lot of creative sort of cards. Not necessarily great for business cards, but can work well as thank-you notes and things of that nature.
When I went to startup school in 2005, I made business cards containing my contact details in a Lisp plist and printed them using one of those cheap perforated sheets. They went over quite well.
You spend your time creating and learning and meeting interesting people instead of obsessing over unimportant details like business card designs. You meet someone. You want them to know they are personally important to you. You want them to be able to contact you.
Just take out the simple, elegant, paper notebook you habitually carry to record thoughts, names, lists, etc. Keep talking. Print your name and the way you would prefer to be contacted. Add the date. Hand the piece of paper to your "contact".
Immediately you have something beyond the trading of little uniform squares of bland cardboard.
I disagree. If you're going to mixers for startups, which for us is how we're hoping to stir up customers, it's good to be able to give them something to hang onto. It's a lot less clumsy than having to reach for a pen and paper. Why do I say this? Because I tried pen and paper at the last one that I went to. Yesterday I ordered business cards.
That said, I don't think it's important that they're impressive early on. If we're going to impress people it's going to be with what we say, not with our cards. The card has one function: so that they still have our contact info when they get back to their office. I got the cheapest ones I could find (50 for €12) and spent all of about half an hour sorting that out.
The business cards that I ordered are all just text, black on white, in Times. On the left in bigger print is our name and slogan, on the right is my name, title, email address, phone number and our website. I'd love to have something well designed, but if you stay minimal, you can usually avoid being overtly ugly.
Clean design is important, but impressing people with our design skills is less core for us than most news.YC readers since we're providing tools to integrate to other sites (at the data-level) rather than user-accessible components. We just need to look professional, not so much exciting.
Plus I think that having a design that makes a notable impression is possible, but to get above the run-of-the-mill nice looking cards, you're going to pay. That's fine if you're Guy Kawasaki. For us, I'm just hoping that the people that would remember me anyway remember me plus have my email address.
I couldn't tell you what any of the cards that I collected at my last outing looked like. I copied them into my address book at home, synched to my phone, connected to the folks on LinkedIn / Xing, and threw them in the recycling bin. :-)
Maybe I figure we're in a slightly different forum here. I'm under the impression most folks here are the creators, not the salespeople. Some cheap business cards simply printed might be useful for the latter, and I guess in some circumstances for the former too - but what your describe seems a little like leaving a flyer under somebody's windshield wipers in the parking lot.
But if hacker or engineer or physician or writer or anyone else who actually does the hard work pulls out some fancy-dancy-designed cards and seems to be all about "mixing" rather than building, I start to wonder.
I'm development, marketing, sales, investor relations, quality assurance, public relations, human resources, customer service and janitor. I suspect most people are in the same boat. ;-)
Keeping it simple. (I'm the sole owner of Avecora, which is why it has my other info on it as well.)
Backside of the card is light grey, so you can write over it if needed. Font size is large enough, but not huge, as Kawasaki's is.
Thoughts?