Wednesday, March 05, 2008

New business card "anti" design

(front)


(back)


I recently ran out of cards, and found myself scribbling my contact info on random bits of paper for people. Two kinds of "bits of paper" were most common: corners of sheets of note book paper, and receipts. I wanted to try one of these moderately priced 4/4 color printing places for business cards. So, I figured if I was going color, I might as well take advantage of it.

Trying to come up with a unique business card is not easy. I was imagining a 2 spot color card, but these never look good when done in process color. They end up looking like mottled color photocopies of real spot color business cards. This has always been my main hesitation with 4 color process over spot color process for images that aren't continuous tone.

So, I thought about how to take advantage of 4/1 color and do something different. I thought about the basic usage of business cards. Then I thought about the basic info on them. What do I usually scribble down when time and space on a scrap of paper are limited? I thought name and email, and sometimes the website.

When I thought of this, I saw in my mind the usual scrap I would write this on for people and thought - bingo! - that's what I'll do in 4 color for my new business card.

So, for now, my business card is a 4 color process scribble on a receipt, with a clean but crumpled logo paperclipped to the corner. Now the business card looks like what I've been giving people for the last month or two, but only much sturdier :)

The image consists of scanned receipts and scanned inked text and a scanned paper clip. The paper in the right corner and logo were created in Photoshop. All the elements were composited together in Photoshop at 300dpi. From nextdayflyers.com, this is not even 20 bucks for 100 cards, shipped UPS ground.

3 comments:

Bobotron said...

The big "bonFX" on the 1/c side Bothers me just a bit because it doesn't fit the "grabbed a receipt and clipped stuff to it" effect. Otherwise, I think it is a great card. Dos it imply messiness? I dunno. That is a whole different discussion. :-)

dbonneville said...

I went back and forth about that. I wanted the back side to break free from the "illusion" a little bit with a nice big clean logo. Kind of a "wink" to the viewer that this is a joke. I have no idea how people will react to this. But, at the least, it will give me chance to chat with them and hopefully get them to think of me next time they need design work! If they forget about the card, I have failed!

I was thinking of a series of cards, because they are so cheap to make, and let a potential client or contact choose one. I could do a modified credit card with my info in there somehow, or a license, etc.

What else is roughly this size that is good fodder for illusion? My gears are turning :)

Paul Bonneville said...

Howdy!

I think the card rocks and I've never seen anyone do this type of card before.

The concept of a series of them is great too.

I wish I thought of it...all I came up with is ganking Adobe's CS3 logo's and playing with it a bit:

http://witspigot.com/