Cheap Business Cards
Cards on the Super Cheap
This probably occurred to others... but the standard business card is 2" by 3.5". And the 3.5" direction is about 1/2 inch more than I like in order to have it easily fit in my wallet.
Coincidentally a 4x6 print is exactly large enough to hold four 2x3" cards. 2x3 is the aspect ratio of my camera... Do you see an alignment of planets taking place here?
And finally, at Costco a number of purchases - in particular Compact Flash cards - come with a coupon for "50 Free Prints".
Sure there are alternatives. "Moo cards" come in regular and mini sizes which are compact, but too expensive for what they are IMHO (100 cards for $20!?!, that's 5 cents each). My solution nets 200 cards for $0 + the cost of a trip to Costco and some time creating the setup and then cutting cards using a rotary paper trimmer. Don't have a 50 free coupon? Well, the prints often go on sale for 9 cents per each 4x6... that's still less then 3 cents per card. Regular rate is 13 cents - less than 4 cents per card. Before you use up all 50 of your prints you can pay a few cents for some experiments to see if you'll like 'em.
So I layout several of my shots with some nice typography and simple borders and Voila! 200 free business cards. I used Photoshop and set up layers with different text, a layer with an inner ferrule (white line), and a layer with an outer and an inner black border. Using the hide/show feature of layers I experiment with each shot, saving off a 900x600 pixel tiff or JPG of each card I like. I take four images and drop them on an 1800 x 1200 canvas.
NOTE: Matte finish works better than glossy for this purpose, and do expect some "random" cropping of the edges - that's why I've added borders around all the cards to account for variations in where the prints are cropped. They WON'T be printed on the backs. If you want back printing you can either print stickers, or glue two cards back to back before cutting them.
I put a variety of different text on the cards - mostly just my website. The motivated will find my email address there. I suppose if I were more serious about it, I could add my phone number and address. Indeed, I have a few cards with that information on them.
When I run into photographers I like ;-) or when I happen to get inquiries while shooting (and that happens all the time) - I hand 'em one of these fine looking, ultra low cost cards. I usually let them pick the one they want, too.
See below for some more examples of sheets and individual cards. By the way, the card images look great on my iPhone.
© Copyright 2009, Steven Christenson.
The photos above are mine, all mine. You are more than welcome to use the idea yourself.
Cheap Business Cards
Cards on the Super Cheap
This probably occurred to others... but the standard business card is 2" by 3.5". And the 3.5" direction is about 1/2 inch more than I like in order to have it easily fit in my wallet.
Coincidentally a 4x6 print is exactly large enough to hold four 2x3" cards. 2x3 is the aspect ratio of my camera... Do you see an alignment of planets taking place here?
And finally, at Costco a number of purchases - in particular Compact Flash cards - come with a coupon for "50 Free Prints".
Sure there are alternatives. "Moo cards" come in regular and mini sizes which are compact, but too expensive for what they are IMHO (100 cards for $20!?!, that's 5 cents each). My solution nets 200 cards for $0 + the cost of a trip to Costco and some time creating the setup and then cutting cards using a rotary paper trimmer. Don't have a 50 free coupon? Well, the prints often go on sale for 9 cents per each 4x6... that's still less then 3 cents per card. Regular rate is 13 cents - less than 4 cents per card. Before you use up all 50 of your prints you can pay a few cents for some experiments to see if you'll like 'em.
So I layout several of my shots with some nice typography and simple borders and Voila! 200 free business cards. I used Photoshop and set up layers with different text, a layer with an inner ferrule (white line), and a layer with an outer and an inner black border. Using the hide/show feature of layers I experiment with each shot, saving off a 900x600 pixel tiff or JPG of each card I like. I take four images and drop them on an 1800 x 1200 canvas.
NOTE: Matte finish works better than glossy for this purpose, and do expect some "random" cropping of the edges - that's why I've added borders around all the cards to account for variations in where the prints are cropped. They WON'T be printed on the backs. If you want back printing you can either print stickers, or glue two cards back to back before cutting them.
I put a variety of different text on the cards - mostly just my website. The motivated will find my email address there. I suppose if I were more serious about it, I could add my phone number and address. Indeed, I have a few cards with that information on them.
When I run into photographers I like ;-) or when I happen to get inquiries while shooting (and that happens all the time) - I hand 'em one of these fine looking, ultra low cost cards. I usually let them pick the one they want, too.
See below for some more examples of sheets and individual cards. By the way, the card images look great on my iPhone.
© Copyright 2009, Steven Christenson.
The photos above are mine, all mine. You are more than welcome to use the idea yourself.