There are a lot of examples of similar steel cards in various shapes, colors and sizes.

Some points you mentioned are valid. Some are not. I do design business, so I would like to share my thoughts.

1. Simplicity – yes. But, the font you mentioned, not really applicable. The industry standard is to use Helvetica. It has a wide range of variant, thus easy to adapt.

2. colors – you should not worry about colors because most printers charge the same price now. Gone were the days when you are charged by 2 colors etc. These are old, digital printers.

3. photos – I must say I disagree with your point here. Certain industries need to have photo, because it adds credibility and trust. Insurance agent, school tutors, property agent etc, photo is a must. I have a customer running tuition centre and he has photo on his namecard. His customer feedback to him saying “You dare to put photos on your namecard, you must be good.” See the impact?

I have to add a few more points here

1. Get a pro/designer to do it for you. There are reasons why certain card are designed that way.

2. Get your logo done 1st before doing namecard.

3. Print offset with lamination whenever possible. The color is more lasting, card is better quality and it gives a very professional image.

4. Get a domain nane and website. It enhance your overall image. A namecard without email & website nowadays, it’s like a namecard without phone number. Email is catching up as the main communication channel.

5. Ask your designer to give you the design file in PDF format. Then it is easy for you to ask any printer to reprint.

6. Be creative. Use odd size, die cut, emboss, daring fonts etc. It is important to make a strong impression.

You can check out some of our work here http://www.netsarius.com/namecard-design.html We explain the process of re-designing a namecard.

I’d like to add that there’s a growing digital divide between old line and new line companies.

I find it’s imperative to add an email address and a website/blog address to my business cards, especially since i’m positioning myself as a blogger/affiliate marketer.

furthermore, i’d say including your MSN and Skype IDs facilitate communication as well (but people keep sending email to my hotmail account which I hardly check!)

I don’t have a fax number on my card and old line companies ask, how can i fax it to you?

me: don’t have a fax. can you email it to me?

them: no, only hard copy

me: can you scan to PDF and email me?

them: huh? what’s scan? what PDF?

me: ugh!!!!

—
My other pet peeve: using a gmail, yahoo, hotmail address on a business card.

it’s fine for your hobby dog grooming website, or kite flying blog.

but c’mon…. if you’re a $5m service company and your management can’t spend $50 a year for a domain and email hosting….

double ugh!!!!!

Andrew Wee
http://www.WhoIsAndrewWee.com

You have gotten a point there. We can include civil servants now as another one. However, you should see some cards that I get from real estate agents. Then you will understand why I gave that comment about “wasting space”.

Well, the feedback we used to get is that we write too long articles, and hence we try to write within 600-1200 words for each article. In any case, we also let the readers respond with some additional points so that they can cover what we miss out.

We will see what we can do to expand the article a bit more.

I find most of the articles on this blog too short, and don’t expand on the interesting points they bring up. Were they written too hastily?

Also I think a business card has two sides, maybe the thing is in utilising all the space on the card?

Ones which u can transfer from person to person .. within seconds .. using devices …

what will be the pros and cons of that product ?

The scanning of “hip” namecards can prove fustrating.