Bodacious business cards: 2019

Sunday, April 14, 2019

Cropping tips for business card design

Cropping tips for business card design

This is an advanced topic for Adobe Photoshop users.

Starting with an average size digital photo (3872 x 2592), composing and cropping the image down to business card size (615 x 1062)can be a challenge. To solve this problem, I created a Photoshop template with an outside border, an inner translucent border, and a transparent center rectangle. I copy and paste this template image into a separate layer in the digital image I'm working with, and I can move the business card sized crop frame around the larger image so I can easily visualize and select the business card composition.

The frame, by itself, is not much to look at:

For this example, I am using a free stock photo from Dreamstime.com. This particular photo is 3000 x 2400 pixels, much larger than business card size. I have pasted my cropping frame to three different layers in Photoshop and I move them around to select likely compositions.

The Photoshop business card frame file is created to standard business card technical specification, with a tenth of an inch extra room on each side for full-bleed overlap. By copying the cropping template file image and pasting into the working photograph in Photoshop, the relative size and dimension of a business card is easily visualized, as seen in the image above.

The floating crop-frame can be re-positioned anywhere on the larger image. The framed area of the photograph will be selected using the Photoshop selector tool to grab and copy an exact-sized copy of the photo.

Once you have framed the business card composition you like, use the Photoshop slector tool to grab both the transparent inner rectangle and the wide translucent white border of the crop frame. Then switch to the underlying photo layer, copy the contents, open a new file, and paste. These are the result:

Here is another example.

For this example, I am using Dreamstime stock photo of Multnomah Falls, # 921724 by Polish photographer Leszek Wilk. This particular photo is available for free download from Dreamstime, subject to its Limited Royalty Free Licenses (RF-LL).

I hope this helps.
Here's is the finished product ready for sale on Zazzle.

Dark forest personalized business card
by Bodacious_Bodega

Friday, April 12, 2019

What is a business card?

What is a business card?

Everyone has an existing idea of what a business card looks like and what it is for. Apply basic principles, a business card *could* be and mean anything I want. It is a 2" x 3.5" piece of card stock, of various thickness, with printing on it. These days the printing is full color. A "business card" is nothing more than a miniature billboard with anything I want to put on it.

Anything.

Puzzle pieces personalized business card

Puzzle pieces personalized business card
by Bodacious_Bodega

Cheapest business card printing.

Cheapest business card printing. Best for designers who upload their own designs.

Still it seems to me that VistaPrint.com is the clear winner for being the cheapest source for business cards. I've used Vistaprint for more than ten years, and I have always been very satisfied with its services. Of course, I upload my own business card designs and I am interested only in the price of printing. Vistaprint is cheap.

I pity anyone who must rely upon the stock business card designs on Vistaprint that a non-graphic designer must choose from. Here are your choices: (1) Boring, (2) Bland, or (3) Blend in.
This does NOT reflect my theory of business cards. As far as I am concerned, a business card should stand out, grab your attention, and be memorable. Why spend your money on less than that?

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Personalized Angel Stickers

Personalized angel sticker
by Miracles and Angels

Monday, March 11, 2019

Royalty-free photos from NASA

Royalty-free photos from NASA Some of the most fascinating photographs I've seen have come from the space program. This photo of a space-suited astronaut standing on the dusty surface of the moon, nearly 40 years ago, is a never-ending source of wonder for me.

One quirk of the U.S. copyright law is that photos produced by the U.S. Government are not protected by copyright. This means that anyone, including you, can use them for free.

I have used several of NASA's space photos to create business card designs.

You can find a great collection of NASA photographs here:

Jet Propulsion Laboratory - Earth Images
JPL terms of use

NASA Image Gallery
NASA terms of use

Sunday, February 24, 2019

If you want it tomorrow, order it last week

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If you want it tomorrow, order it last week

It wasn't that many years ago that if you told a commercial printer you wanted your 4-color business cards next week, they would laugh in your face. The standard turn-around time for color printing was 21 days or three weeks, whichever happened first, not including shipping time.

Some parts, but by no means all, of the printing industry have modernized, have developed highly automated work flow, and can accommodate the desire for right now! results, but there is a premium price to be paid for it.

One of my favorite printers is Print Place in Arlington, Texas. Print Place is a highly automated low-cost printer with outstanding service. If you are savvy enough to know how to provide a commercial printer with the type of digital file that it requires, I recommend you take a look at it.

After the design work has been completed and a digital master is ready to be sent to the printer, there are two remaining components to delivery time: 1. The time the printer takes to complete the job, and 2. Shipping time. Print Place offers four different in-house turn around times ranging from five business days to one day. Print Place ships through FedEx, with its standard five, three, two, and next-day delivery times. Combining the printing time with the shipping time, we have a variety of time frames ranging from ten business days for receiving the print job, down to as quick as two days. Every reduction in delivery time results in an increase in cost, at your option.

The following graph shows the total printing and shipping cost for 1000 4-color business cards from Print Place for different delivery times after the job is submitted. As you can see, for two day delivery the cost of shipping exceeds the cost of printing. This example uses the shipping costs from Arlington, Texas where Print Place is located, to Louisville, Kentucky where I am located.

If you need 1000 color business cards in less than 48 hours, that too can be accomplished by using a totally different technology. Overnight color laser printing, at FedEx-Kinkos for example, is available, but the printing costs alone would be in the neighborhood of $130.00, without including any shipping costs.

When it comes to color business cards, "right now" is a possibility, but it is an expensive option.

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A perfect business card for residential real estate

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A perfect business card for residential real estate

I'm not in real estate, but I've known quite a few real estate agents over the years. I'd say that, as a group, real estate agents use the most boring, predictable, and nearly identical appearing business cards. The sheer tedium of real estate agent business cards is surpassed only by those used by lawyers and accountants.

If I were a residential real estate agent I'd have, in addition to my standard boring business card, a good supply of this card to stick in the door of every FSBO I passed. All my usual contact information would be printed on the back side of the card.

Bodacious business cards: Rethinking business cards

Rethinking business cards

After looking at thousands of business cards over a lifetime, a person
has a good idea what they are, what they are for, and what to expect. A
name, address, phone number, and various other methods of contact, with a
logo perhaps or a photo of a grinning face, and there you have your
basic business card. What more is there? When was the last time you
were surprised and delighted by a business card?

I have a different way to look at business cards.

I see a business card as a blank two-sided canvas. With about 7 square inches per side, a business card presents a very small blank canvas to work upon, but its blankness stands as an open invitation to print anything I wish in any style I can imagine.

The utter sameness
of the business cards I've seen over the years tells me that there is a
vast unexplored gap between the unquestioned business card conventions
and the untapped potential.

The small size, portability, and
picayune cost of business cards make them a perfect marketing tool. The
ideal is to have a "you gotta look at this" or a "put this one on the
bulletin board" type business card. You can have seasonal business
cards, holiday business cards, humorous business cards, pin-up girl
business cards, special offer business cards, limited time business
cards, and inspirational message business cards, or more.