Business Cards Resources

History of business cards

Business cards contains one's professional or personal informartion. During formal introductions they are exchanged as a method to swap information and easily contact the other party in the future. Hence you can find the following  information on a business card: the giver's name, her company affiliation, her company logo, her phone number(s), her email address, her street addresses, and her website address. For more go to Wikipedia...

Free business cards and free templates

"They say the best things in life are free". Well business cards are far from being the best thing in life, but they are probably the best piece of print marketing you can invest in and you can get them for free. Ok not entirely free; in most cases you will need to  pay for shipping which is still a great deal.

1- Bizcard ,an eco-friendly print solution provider, is a good source to get 250 free cards at all time . You can choose a design from its catalog or upload your own.

2- Vistaprint has free catalog available. Although the company is the market leader, several customers complained about the speed of its service. I guess if you are getting free products you should be patient.

3-  FreePrintableCards is another provider of free business cards. The simplicity of its service makes it appealing. You can also upgrade and get more sophisticated designed and print quality.

 4- OOprint offers 100 cards for free. As with Vistaprint they may add their logo on the back of the cards.

4- Ehow offers a few tips on its site about how you can get your cards for free.

5- If you are in the market simply for business card templates enjoy these at Free Templates Depot ,

6- About.com has some free templates for small businesses. 

7- Templates 4 Cards offers more sophisticated choices, as well as 

8- Tres Chic Geek.

 

Business cards How To

 If you are going to order "business cards", the first thing you need to do before finding a flashy design and order 1000 of them is to understand their purpose. It is a marketing tool, and it should convey a message about you and your business. Before you hit the "BUY" button have a look at this few links:

1- About.com 11 steps to the proper business card 

2- Intuitive: Best Practices in  designing your best marketing tool

3- Metal business cards are not common but they will definitely catch one's attention. See why

4- Entrepreneur How to use your business cards as a marketing tool.

5- Guy Kawasaki, the famous investor and serial entrepreneur talks about The Art of the business card on his blog.  

6- Seth Godin, the marketing guru gives a couple of advices about what to add and what not to add.

7- Boing Boing Read here

8- Penelope Trunk: What you should  write on your business card.

9- About.com video shows how you can buidl your own using Illustrator 

10- About.com video 2: Marketing For Real Estate using a business card 

11- Des Walsh tells how to use get Business out of your business card

Business Card Design

UPDATE: Stop reading right here and have a look at 70 New Amazing business cards from FrancesComugnai, then you can come back for more.

UPDATE 2: The Toxel team cherry picked a few items and built a nice compilation.

UPDATE 3: The DZine blog publishes another collection of  36 unique cards.

1-LifeClever shares with us 584 ways to design your next  business card.

2- BlogOhBLog shows off a few  designs.

3- Uprint collection is simply beautiful. My personal favorites are Hello and Four Seasons

4- Flickr : This is probably of the Flickr photo collection and they happen to all be business cards. 

5- CreativeBits has the best post about cool uniques designs. This collection goes to show how creative some designers are. 

6- Ehow: On how to make your own  business card.

7- CrazyLeaf gathers 35 interesting and creatives designs. 

8- DZine's blog points 27 creative cards you should see.

9- Moo is shaking the personal printing business and shows other companies that being a "cool printing company" is not an oxymoron.

10- Logoworks: Cards and logo design. They may cost you a few hundreds but they are well worth the cost. 

11- If you are looking for professionals logo design for  your next card have a look at LogoAngel.

 

Select, Order, Receive

Here are the usual suspects. These companies are some of the pioneers in the industry although their service fails to prove so: 

1- Vista print

2- 123print

3- Zazzle

4- 48hours

 

Eco-friendly printing

We are all aware of the impact the printing industry has on our environement.If you are a treehugger or care about your environement slighlty more than the average joe, you can look into companies that offer eco-friendly printing solutions. The prices are usually about the same. These companies usually eliminate photo processing chemicals, order from GreenSeal certified companies, plant trees for each order you make etc.... For example  a few artisits at Etsy offer eco-friendly print services. Bizcard is an eco-friendly printing company see  here  and LA Green Girl made list of companies that can help you turn your office green. 

Question and Answers below 

If you need more information  you can visit one  the sites below and find an answer:

1- Twitter: Real time tweets.

2- AnswerBag  

3- LinkedIn

4- Yahoo Answers

 

More resources

Here are a few more resources; from downloable software to Plastic business cards etc...

1- PC Magazine lists a business card scanner.Scanners  were very popular a few years ago, but they are quickly loosing their appeal.

2- Business.com offers a list of business cards printing companies.

3- See the Yahoo Directory of business printing providers. 

4- Download has a list of  software providers:

5- If you are in the mood for some plastic or metal cards, you can go  here  ,  here ,  here , or  here.

6- CreativeBits: Coolest business card designs.

7- Makezine: Metal business cards.