Owenskies Blog

Toying with Business Card Designs

3:32 PM, January 16, 2008 .. Link

I first made and designed my own business card back in high school. And I made not just one design but several. Now you might say, “Who would want a business card from a nobody, high school student?” Simple. My friends.

“I have a number to give out so I might as well do it in style,” I thought. So I conjured up my own business cards back in 1996 or so. Yes, I had no knowledge of other design programs back then and still Corel Draw was a bit new and troublesome for me. Anyhow, all I needed back then was MS Word and clip art images. I also only had the Paintbrush tool where I would make my own designs. I would later copy and paste these designs and lay them out in a blank Word document for printing. I was off to a good start with MS Word. I felt I could print anything.

So there, I have had sheets of my own business cards. Back then of course, my print outs weren’t exactly those of a professional 4 color business card printing company. They were actually a far cry, so there. But it really did give me a sense of freedom – as to who I could be, which facet of me should I reveal on my cards and so on. I kept playing on with different designs and I felt I could be anybody. The possibilities were absolutely liberating. It’s realizing big fantasies on such small 2 x 3 spaces. Isn’t that weird?!

There were stars, unicorns, rainbows and bears on one business card. On another, there were paintings of famous artists. On others, there were just these collections of crazy fonts. I printed pastel colors, dark colors, neutral ones, greys and so on.

I even bought all kinds of paper I could get my hands on. Simple bond papers are no good, except of course for text prints. I printed on board stock, on colored paper, on neon paper, paper with metallic finish, pearlized colors, paper with all sorts of texture, and so on. I think I even printed sticker business cards.

Consequently, I learned my ABCs on printing from such experience no matter how limited it may seem.

I knew better what to expect when printing on colored paper, on highly-textured paper or paper with uneven surface, and on paper with a smooth feel versus ones with a rough feel among others..

Nowadays, with the complexity of design software programs and with the confusing resolution, of dpi’s and ppi’s, and file formats, I sometimes wonder “Do we get to toy around with printing and design anymore?” I guess I better buy my Dummy guides soon.

{ Last Page } { Page 46 of 66 } { Next Page }

Owenskies Blog

Toying with Business Card Designs

About Me

Links

Categories

Recent Entries

Friends