New business cards

Time to print new business cards. And every time I run out I always come up with a new business card, definitely not what’s recommended for “brand recognition” in Marketing 101 but I’m a work in progress and my business cards reflect that.

My son was actually the one who suggested I put an image on the card. And then since nothing I do is ever simple, I ended up with four different images. I know enough about printing to know that business cards aren’t printed one at a time.  If you print four different business cards at a time we used to call this “4 up”. Some of the places where you might order a business card online print tens at a time. Your business card is being printed along with 50 others (maybe more?) and then they are all cut down afterwards.

I decided to use my signature as my “logo” to reflect the way I sign my paintings.  Maybe now I can stick with that, it at least has a connection to my paintings. Then came the fun part, picking images to put on the cards.

The cows and horses are taken from recent paintings. The little boy is a recent portrait and I figured it would be good to have a business card with a portrait for portrait clients. doh. The last one is a painting I did in a model lab years ago. I had painted that model in that pose for three weeks straight and on the fourth week I decided to paint the model and two other artists working away. I’m glad I did, seeing that little image of the classroom makes me miss going to model labs, I haven’t been to one in over a year.

So, what kind of business card is this with no information on it, you ask? My full name, website address and e-mail address are on the back. We’ll see how this works out. Like I said, every time I print business cards I try something new.

Above are the proofs of the card that I approved at the printer. The advantage of having business cards printed locally is that I can drive over to my printer and look at the color on the proofs. For the big online companies all you get is an image to approve online.

I had postcards printed online once by Vistaprint. A man in Jamaica took my order, the postcards were printed in Canada, and shipped to me here in Houston. They actually did a pretty good job and even with the shipping it was an inexpensive way to go. If you’re not very picky about the color you’re getting that could be a good way to go. I’m picky about color, especially when it comes to an image of a portrait.

I love anything printed so maybe that’s why I love this process so much and why this post about my new business cards is longer than most of my other posts! Thank you for reading my blog, if you would like to SUBSCRIBE to my blog just type in your e-mail in the box over there to the right. I will not share your address with anyone and you can cancel anytime.

Edit: A review of some of the large online printing houses can be found by Business News Daily at this site: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5223-best-business-card-printing-services.html