David Gildeh

Today I just received my order of new business cards from VistaPrint. Now they weren’t as cheap as the ones they advertise on their site, because I added my own custom logo (my Southpark avatar that I use on this site) and you have to pay almost £6 just for the standard postage! So all in all around £11 for 250 cards which arrived slightly over one week later.

My friend Yuri, who is a graphics designer and is refreshingly very opinionated on anything she doesn’t like, thought using my Southpark logo was slightly unprofessional, and also being low resolution wouldn’t look that good (agreed but what can you do hey?) and also my slogan “IT Guru for your business” wasn’t that serious…

It really depends on how seriously people take business cards, I thought the whole point was so the other person has your contact details not a new piece of artwork to put on their desk, and I think having something a bit different will stand out as I’ll usually be handing them out at networking events where everyone will be collecting cards from loads of people, so I think you need something for them to remember, even if the best I could do was a “quirky” slogan! Ideally having a list of services I provide on the back would have been better but I couldn’t find that option on VistaPrint to do anything that exciting! Also, hopefully meeting me in person will confirm I’m very professional and capable of helping them with their IT. I didn’t put “Web Guru for your business” even though I specialise in the web, because after almost 4 years designing IT systems for large businesses, I also know a lot about setting up servers, networks and other things small businesses might need. My main expertise is in content management, how companies can use software to manage the huge amounts of documents/content they produce over the years and collaborate on them, which is web related, but not always…

Do people really take them so seriously if they’re not Asian? I remember from my working over there it was like a religion and the way you took the card, made a point of reading it carefully and didn’t put it away until the other person left was all part of the culture! It was very useful in meetings with new people, I could put them all on the table in the same layout as the people sitting around so I never forgot anyone’s name, especially helpful when they have a name you can bearly pronounce let alone remember!

Anyway, I like the design, but I do appreciate my eye for this kind of thing tends to be crap, so I’d appreciate any feedback on my new business card (click on the thumbnail above to pop-up the full size version for a closer look!) and also any other mantra on business card etiquette!