On Printing Business Cards

Darius Kazemi — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:19:17 +0000

Someone recently asked me, “How many business cards should I take to the Game Developers Conference?”

The short answer: 300, but you should bring up to 500 if you can afford it.

Longer answer: the one time I ran of out business cards at GDC was my first year. I brought 200 and ran out by my fifth day. You should assume that you’ll probably give out 50 cards a day at GDC, especially if it’s your first year attending. (When you come back a second year you don’t have to give a card to people you already know, so your first year will probably be the most demanding in terms of card usage.) I think 50 a day is about average, but it’s very possible to give out 100 cards in a day.

So if you’re going to be there for five days, bring at least 300. If you’re going to be there for three days, bring at least 200. Honestly though, you might as well bring 500 cards. If you have a few hundred left over, hey, use them at the next networking event you attend!

Tips for Printing and Designing Cards

Vistaprint is probably the best-regarded online business card service (they serve both the US and EU). I tend to use Staples to print my cards by going to the store and placing an order in person — of the national brick-and-mortar chains that print business cards, I think their quality-to-price ratio is the best. As I’ve said before, you should print your card on non-glossy stock, as it’s hard to take notes on a glossy card.

You can design your business card in any software you’re comfortable with as long as you can create a PDF file in the correct dimensions. If you’d like to design your own business cards and don’t know where to begin, I recommend Scribus. The dimensions for an American business card are 2″ tall by 3.5″ wide, and you want to leave at least 0.25″ margins for printer variation. For some nice fonts you might want to use, check out this article and this website.

Update: there’s a followup post I’ve written.

Effective Networking (Don’t Be This Guy)

Darius Kazemi — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 22:30:00 +0000

This man, Joel Bauer, is apparently a real person giving real advice to real people (warning, link may cause your brain to explode).

Uh, don’t take his advice. Please. He’s the kind of person who gives networking a bad name.

Yeah, I have a few networking gimmicks. But your foil-embossed, die-cut, pop-up card? Screw that. (Unless it says something about you. At GDC I met a girl who’s a metalsmith and she gave me a metal card that she made herself. THAT IS COOL.)

He does have one good point buried in the bullshit: it’s important to let people know, via your business card, what you actually do, as opposed to your often-meaningless title.

But the gimmicks, and the arrogance, and the sense of superiority? People can smell that coming a mile away.

In the video he says that networking is not about being likable, it’s about getting results. Ask yourself: would you want to be friends with this guy? Would you want to do business with this guy?

Tiny Subversions » business cards

On Printing Business Cards

Tips for Printing and Designing Cards

Effective Networking (Don’t Be This Guy)