Open Thread: What's On Your Business Cards?

business cardsIt’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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