Got my first lot of business cards today!

It’s strange but it feels like it’s finally an official business, now that I’ve got some little cardboard rectangles to prove it!

I ordered the business cards from GoodPrint, an online printing company here in the UK. Their prices are reasonable, they allow you to upload your own artwork as PDF and the ordering process is very good. You upload the PDF and they show you a preview of the finished item, along with all the margins, borders and cut lines – so you can make sure that you’re going to get exactly what you want, without any edges getting chopped off or anything.

I decided that the cards were worth doing properly, as these are going to be in the hands of prospective customers; I wanted them to look elegant and feel high quality.

Most online printers have a range of pre-designed cards that you can choose from, and customize with your name and logo. These are by far the cheapest option – and some of them aren’t bad – but they aren’t what I want. I’m supposed to be a designer, as well as a developer, so I really need to design these myself.

I played around for a while with different designs (which I didn’t keep, unfortunately, so I can’t show them here) using Xara, my drawing program of choice on Windows.

This is the design I ended up with, this is the front:
and this is the back:

I ordered 50 cards, on GoodPrint’s standard card, with a nice silky matte finish, for £32 plus delivery. Fairly pricey but not outrageous. They also arrived the day after I ordered them, which was nice. All in all, I’m very pleased with them. Now all I have to do is find people to give them to!