Business cards are like taxis– you can go weeks without seeing any that strike your fancy and then you’ll encounter several at once. This week we run the gamut from handcrafted to out-of-this-world with a watercolor-and-ink beauty, a helluva halftone, and a calling card that leaves us all aglow. (Previous Cool Cards of the Week can be found right here.)
Watercolor and Ink Business Card
To the best of our knowledge this isn’t a business card at all, but it would make a stunning one nevertheless – it certainly gives you an idea of how effective a moody piece of art like this could be in that capacity. An ink and watercolor affair quoting YouTube star Connor Franta, it was created by artist Kathleen and makes us seriously reconsider our own business card strategy. We can easily imagine printing up a black and white series that we’d then watercolor individually. (Italian travel site ItalianFix.com did something similar here.) Sure, it would take quite a bit of time to produce enough to tackle the various design conventions we have coming up, but you could certainly make enough to impress those potential clients you have your eye on.
Fanhandle Business Card
This fun little number, designed by Gabe Couch for Fanhandle, is a wonderful example of what you can achieve when you sit down and think through the purpose of your card. While it’s a bit difficult to work out what exactly Fanhandle does – their site leaves it at: “Our simple & powerful platform for personal brands (musicians, actors, athletes, celebrities, etc.) helps them engage their fans in the most personal way” – the card communicates two things right away: we’re about fans (the image on the card) and quality (gold foil and edge painting). The halftone image was screen printed on Colorplan Real Grey 100 lb. Cover and then duplexed to Neenah Classic Crest Smooth Solar White 130 lb. Cover to create a chunky card that you can’t put down. (And of course that thickness is great for the gold edge painting, too.)
Luminescent Business Card
QR codes, augmented reality – there’s seemingly no end to the ways people try to inject technology into business cards these days. Yet few such efforts have looked as good as this gorgeous creation for artist Ghizlan el Glaoui, which lights up her image and details with a simple LED tucked away in one corner. And speaking of details, here are a few from Gizmodo:
“Designed by a creative agency called The Big A, the acrylic card relies on a phenomenon known as total internal reflection which causes all of the laser-etched details to glow when the LED in the corner is squeezed and turned on.”
