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Previous: Email Predictions from 1996 I've never been a fan of designing and printing your own business cards. In fact, I used to recommend against doing that because most self-produced business cards I'd seen looked homemade. Sometimes the cards looked bad because the design looked unprofessional. But even where the overall design looked good, the edges of the cards usually weren't smooth. To make matters worse, the cards felt flimsy. But now, I've changed my opinion. And here's why. I was getting myself organized to attend a 3-day conference when I realized I was just about out of business cards. My cards are multicolored, so I knew there wouldn't be enough time to have them printed commercially before I left for the conference. So, I went to one of the office supply stores nearby to see what kind of print-it-yourself business card paper was available. I figured I'd just "make do" for this trip with whatever I could find. The store had a couple of kind of business card paper available. One was a package of their own store-brand business cards that was broken open, and that felt too thin. But then I spotted some business card paper I hadn't seen at the store before. It was Avery's Linen Texured Clean Edge Business Cards. I bought it, took it home, to try, and wow was I amazed at the results! The business cards I printed using the Avery Linen Textured stock don't feel flimsy. They feel like professionally printed business cards. The printing on them came out crisp and clear, too. (I printed them on an HP Photosmart 8450, and used best mode.) And, the cards broke cleanly apart with no tattle-tale roughness around the edges. I printed up enough to take to the conference and I was so pleased with the results, that I printed up some more, too. In fact, I don't use a lot of cards during the year, so I might just keep printing my own instead of having them commercially printed. If you frequently need to buy 500 or 1000 cards, then printing your own isn't very practical, even though these looked fantastic. But for short runs, or emergencies, if you have a reasonably good color inkjet printer, you can get great results printing your own cards on the Avery Linen Textured Clean Edge Business Card stock. Posted on January 29, 2006 at 9:44 PM | Comments (11)Comments I looked these cards up on Amazon, and if you read the Reviews, it’s not good. Apparently the “original” linen textured cards were great, but they’ve since been modified by Avery to “appear” linen and have ended up looking cheap and are only printable on one side :( Has anybody else had great success with printing your own cards? What paper did you use? I too use very few cards and would like to make my own. Posted by: Cody on January 31, 2006 at 2:16 PM I would guess that the cards I bought are the newest one - I bought them at an Office Depot that had just opened in our area a short time ago. So, it’s not likely the package would have been sitting around a long time on the shelves. The cards did not look cheap - they came out looking fantastic. That’s why I mentioned them here on the blog. I did not try to print on both sides. That’s not something I have a need to do, so I didn’t test it. Posted by: Janet on January 31, 2006 at 3:37 PM I used the same Avery forms and paper for postcard because my printer was unable to produce them in an emergency. They look very professional and after you got the template worked out, they were very easy to do. Its more than a good temporary solution. Posted by: Al on January 31, 2006 at 8:06 PM Well then, this paper sounds like it’s worth checking out. Thanks for all the input. Posted by: Cody on February 1, 2006 at 7:45 PM I never print my own cards. My wife does the design layout in Photoshop (she’s an architect so she knows what she is doing). You could also hire a freelance graphic designer to do it on an hourly basis. Then we just send the file to our local reprographics company (or you can use Kinkos) for printing any quantity we need (usually around 50). They will print multiple copies of the card on a sheet and cut them for us for less than $0.50 per card and have them done in a day if needed. This has been a pretty reasonable solution for us. PS. If you’re not in a large enough city to have a Kinkos or reprographics company that does color printing, send the file by email to the nearest one, then call and ask them to Fed Ex the cards to you. Posted by: Stacy on February 3, 2006 at 3:44 PM That sounds like a great work around, too. If you have the graphics for the card on your own computer and you need the cards for a confernence you’re attending (like I did at the beginning of last month) you could have enough for the conference sent by FedEx to your hotel. Posted by: Janet on February 4, 2006 at 10:11 AM Yep, I agree. The “do it yourself” business card stock has come a long way since I tried it years ago (with rough edges, tears, etc.). It’s probably not the best way to go long-term, but for a short-term emergency as you described (or for a quick small biz start-up), it’s better than it was. Posted by: Scott on March 12, 2006 at 3:09 AM Thanks so much for the recommendation! I need business cards in a hurry, so this sounds like a great solution. Posted by: Hannah on December 8, 2006 at 11:13 PM Business Cards should be looked at like mini billboards. One common mistake that alot of people make is putting their business name at the top of their card! EG. If you fix broken TV’s…rather then put “John’s TV Repairs” at the top, you would be better off putting “Your TV Fixed in 2 Days or You Don’t Pay!” Putting an eye-catching headline is key…just like when you read a newspaper, you look for the headline that interests you and read the article…a business card is the same. There are also ways to get your business card handed out for all over town to your target audience without you even lifting a finger….and it goes directly to your target market. I have a huge blog dedicated to the topic of generating cash flow out of your business cards. Posted by: Dean on April 17, 2007 at 1:51 PM IMHO, nothing can still beat a business card that’s professionally designed, but if you must print your own business cards, I’d have to agree that Avery clean edge business card paper is the best paper to print it on. Posted by: Randall on July 23, 2010 at 11:36 AM |
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Business Cards In A Hurry
Thank you for finding that paper! I too was so adamantly against using the tear off sheets, but emergencies do happen. I had business cards ordered from a printer and they misprinted them. I had to return them and wait for the new ones to be made, - in the meantime running out of cards where I surely could have used temporary ones that look well enough to convey a professional image.
Your articles are always very useful and much appreciated. Thanks again!
Posted by: Ingrid Webster on January 31, 2006 at 9:08 AM