It's in the cards...

Five years ago I was preparing to speak at the HOW Design Conference in New Orleans and realized that I needed to change my ways. Until that time Jeff Fisher LogoMotives did not have a business card. In fact, in the Portland design market I was commonly referred to as "that designer who doesn't have a business card" and had not made use of a card for over a decade. Heading off to my first major design conference, I knew that I needed to have an identifying card to share with others in the profession.

I'd had the concept for my cards (stored away in my tiny little brain) for many years. It was just one of those "the cobbler's kids have no shoes" kind of things - I've always been horrible about getting design projects completed for myself. So, I finally created the business card I wanted; one modeled after the railroad cards in the board game Monopoly. The wonderful folks at Oblation Papers & Press produced my beautiful letterpress cards. I don't remember the quantity produced. I do remember that the final product ended up costing me just over 70 cents per card. Still, it was a very worthy investment in making a great first impression - and it even ended up in The Big Book of Business Cards.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking at my schedule of upcoming speaking engagements, and networking events, and realized I should check my inventory of cards. I was a bit stunned to determine that I only had about 40 of the letterpress cards left in my stationery cabinet. With a Portland biznik networking event less than a week away, I decided I'd better update the mission statement on my card, add needed information and reorganize some content. I uploaded the file to the site of NitroPrint (the company who had done a great job for me on an Identity Crisis! postcard last fall) and in a couple days I had my new card - at less than 3 cents a piece! I'm very happy with the end result and I've been passing the things around like crazy in both Portland and Seattle in the last week.

Today I noticed a timely post on Designers Who Blog about the business cards of those who blog. Check out "Business Cards of Bloggers" and add yours to the growing collection.

© 2008 Jeff Fisher LogoMotives