Quick plug: Perkins Mailing (www.perkinsmailing.com) is a Data, Imaging & Mailing solutions firm located in the downtown Toronto area (Dundas & River Street).
It may interest some to know that I actually run my own I.T. consulting firm. Up until recently it’s been very informal; no business cards, no website, just word of mouth and referrals getting me new clients, and in all honesty the hours can be very scarce (not that I’m complaining, it’s a side gig). I thought that if I invested a little time and money into it, I could get some positive return on my investment… so I decided to formalize the whole operation a little more.
Needless to say, I finished putting www.marcitpro.com together, and then had the much more arduous task of putting together a business card (…that didn’t totally suck). I started out with many five or six slightly different designs before finally starting from scratch with a new idea I had. The pictures you see are the first print of my final design (which I’m sure will be revised eventually).
Two things I had seen in previous business cards that I wanted for my own:
- Embossing, in this case a thermal raise to give the writing a textured feel.
- Linen-esque paper because I’m not a big fan of the plastic/glossy feeling on a business card.
Lucky for me Perkins Mailing knew exactly what I wanted, customized to my every desire, for a great price, and all done within 3 days of submitting my order I had the 500 cards I wanted.
In Photoshop, standard business card size 3.5 x 2 inches (with 10% margins all around), 200 pixels per inch, 8bit RGB. When I submitted the final work to Perkins for printing, I had to submit non-layered file (*.tif in this case). It’s important to note that during ‘development’ of my business card, I printed it several times to see what my work would look like on paper. It’s hard to get a sight for the final work just by looking at it on your computer screen.
The idea I had for the back of the business card, was similar to a tag cloud you see on websites; except instead of the tags I used words relating to either services, or products/services that I support. I was pleased with the final product, and but more so with the speediness and support that Perkins Mailing provided me with; you should definitely give them a call if you’re in need of printing or mailing services.
