Open Thread: What's On Your Business Cards?
It’s not difficult to get business cards. Order online at some place like OvernightPrints if you’re on a limited budget, try a copy center like Copy Max for nicer card stock at a moderate price, or go with a full-service printer like Sir Speedy for luxury cards at a price to match. Of course web working zealots may already have Moo cards from Flickr — they’re cheap, they’re fun, and they’re high quality, though not at all traditional.
The hard part might be deciding what exactly to put on your card. If you’re mashing up your career from a variety of income streams and skillsets (such as web development, web design, and search engine optimization) it’s not so obvious what to call yourself — especially if you work for yourself. If you’re a freelancer but haven’t incorporated your business, you might not know whether to list a business name, and if so, what name to use. If you write or work in multiple places online, you may not know which, if any, to list.
We discussed the question of web developer vs. web designer in an earlier Ask WWD post, arriving at such possibilities as “web technologist,” “front-end web developer,” “devigner,” and “back-end web developer” but this question is broader. It’s not just how you describe what you do, but how you present yourself professionally on a card no larger than three and a half by two inches.
If you do run your own business, you can call yourself anything you want from “Ubergeek of the Universe” to “Lazy Genius” to “Chief Executive and Janitor.” Corporate employees can get creative with job titles also. Subject to space constraints, you can put any combination of phone numbers, IM and VoIP contact names, URLs, photos, avatars, and mottos on your business cards. To make it even more complex, you can design any number of business cards for the different facets of your work life.
Of course there are things you may leave off your business cards: mailing address and fax numbers, while still used, aren’t the primary means of reaching web workers in a time of email, IM, and follow-you-anywhere phone numbers.
So, web workers, what is on your business card? What do you call yourself? And what bits of your persona appear there?
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I’ll go first. I cherish my moo cards. I chose nine pictures of Colorado mountain lakes to every one cookie picture for the back. On the front, I have a small photo of myself, my name, my website (www.annezelenka.com), email, and cell phone number. No IMs, I figure someone can email me first and if we get “intimate” we can move to IM. I’m kind of regretting putting my cell phone on, since I rarely turn it on.
Ha, I’ve got Moo cards, too, and I love them. Since I’m living in Mexico at the moment, I’ve got pictures of my sightseeing around pyramids and cacti on the back, and on the front I’ve got:
Jacob Patton
person of interest
http://trisignia.com
Skype:
I’d like to see a poll here on the WWD site: how many business owners actually buy and use cards? I’m still trying to decide whether to invest in them.
Geof,
I find that not having cards is a huge mistake. So many times I’m just chatting with someone and having a card that has my contact info is crucial. Even better, getting their card so I can follow up.
I’m in the middle of designing new cards/stationary and this article is timely for me.
Eric, wouldn’t just giving them your website URL be enough?
This year at SXSW, I brought business cards for the first time (didn’t bring them last year). I made super cheap ones (B&W, one-sided, 100 for $8 at office max) that were designed specifically for SXSW.
I learned last year that no matter how fancy your business card is – I won’t remember who the heck you are when I get back to my hotel room. This card aims to solve that – if only everyone else brought them!!
Check it out (PDF)
We just have the company name, address, phone, and email address on our cards.
http://www.bfmedia.com/businesscard.jpg
My official title of “Web Technology & Strategy” is somewhat misleading and always requires an explanation, so this year at SxSW Interactive I chose to make up some cards for my blog and hand them out mostly on the side.
First design, I just attached the URL (no name or anything else) then changed my mind. The printer messed up in the end and printed the URL only version. In the end I love it as it was a bit mysterious and I was hoping the recipient would go to the blog and ‘discover’ who I was.
Did it work? Who knows, but I had fun with it! Check out the card here.
oops! This sample looks like the ‘corrected’ version. (w/ name and email)
!. Name.
2. Telephone
3. Email
4. That’s all.
I went with the Moo cards as well. I just chose 10 pictures from my Flickr photos that I liked, and on the backs I have my name, title (Web Developer), mobile phone number, website, and email address.
Even though I do a good amount of work that is outside of a traditional “web developer” role, development is what I do most often, so I just went with that.