3 posts tagged “card”

All you residents of South Pasadena, California, remember this. Contain your temper on the first week of March each year. And it starts now.

What? So for these folks, no Eminem tunes on the first week of March? Snoop Doggy Dog is also out, as well as Paris Hilton. Why Paris Hilton? Well, it’s easier to say bad words when provoked.

If you are wondering what will happen if you accidentally let out a cuss, well, be afraid. Be very afraid.

No arrests were made. No jail time either. But you will be glared at by the town’s conservative folks as if you did something really bad and you need a lot of spanking. Maybe the people’s behavior is affected by the tranquility of the place that is surrounded by trees at the bottom of a mountain range.

Don’t laugh. This is serious. Ask the person who proposed it, 14-year-old McKay Hatch. This boy is also the founder of the No Cussing Club in South Pasadena High School.

If you’re raving mad because it got approved, you can’t do anything about it. Oh, maybe you can beat the boy by proposing the second week of March as the week where no 14-year-olds should be allowed to watch TV or even get near to a PC.

But hey, I’m kidding. This is a good proposal. Thanks to city Mayor Michael Cacciotti who proclaimed the date as No Cussing Week.

So if you are in town on these dates, try selling anything, from Girl Scout cookies to insurance to anything else you can imagine and you won’t be hearing an earful of truly cursed words.

McKay only wants to help. He even started a website dedicated to the No Cussing Club. (Wonder if he is even bent on putting that on a card someday. You know, as some kind of reference he’d attach to himself, like business card printing to go with the reputation.) Nevertheless, the boy hopes to maintain such good quality in people. I just want to see this boy grow and experience life in full.

For now, McKay hopes that this will be a start of something bigger. He wants other places to follow suit. Good boy. And I really hope he maintains that fu*$%ng attitude. Just kidding kiddo.

Why are small businesses obsessing over brand management far too much when they can focus on a million other things like improving their services, or making their products better? I’m not talking about the inherent brand identity but rather the ones created in the drawing boards of the marketing offices.
 
They want to control how consumers think, and we can tell. Although there have is a long list brainwashing wonders in the history of advertising to present, they are mostly those with big budgets to spend and a lifetime’s worth of patience.

Small businesses though work on a tight cash flow of a few thousand dollars a month. They need immediate returns on their investment and marketing materials that can get places, are cheap to print, and  work fast, even instantly. Color business card printing double as flyers, brochures, calendars, anything to get their message stick.

It’s not that big companies simply can afford to spend on branding it’s that it is crucial to their survival. They need to earn the money to keep their big shots on the pay roll. They don’t need a million one-time-sale, they need millions of avid customers and regular consumers.

Back room businesses on the other hand simply need cheap advertising you can hand out with a sales pitch.  Winning one customer now, is considered a success. Getting that one customer to tell a friend is and get a subsequent purchase is heaven sent, and getting two regular customers is a bonanza.

Learn to act accordingly.

Large companies are backed by large corporations who spend other people’s investment. Their one big ideal can be matched with one big capital. As a sole proprietor, you use your own money as capital and have everything to lose. You will be answerable to any debts your business incurs. This should make you far more careful than large companies.

Slow but sure is the way to go.

Keep your day job and allocate a small capital while keeping some money for your personal use. Start with a small production: sell it to your friends, neighbors, and anyone you can get a hold of. From the profit you were able to generate, have a handful of marketing materials printed you can mail to certain people, or put up a website even.

The most important thing though is keep your day job until you have established customer loyalty and are sure your business is sustainable.
 

I first made and designed my own business card back in high school. And I made not just one design but several. Now you might say, “Who would want a business card from a nobody, high school student?” Simple. My friends.

“I have a number to give out so I might as well do it in style,” I thought. So I conjured up my own business cards back in 1996 or so. Yes, I had no knowledge of other design programs back then and still Corel Draw was a bit new and troublesome for me. Anyhow, all I needed back then was MS Word and clip art images. I also only had the Paintbrush tool where I would make my own designs. I would later copy and paste these designs and lay them out in a blank Word document for printing. I was off to a good start with MS Word. I felt I could print anything.

So there, I have had sheets of my own business cards. Back then of course, my print outs weren’t exactly those of a professional 4 color business card printing company. They were actually a far cry, so there. But it really did give me a sense of freedom – as to who I could be, which facet of me should I reveal on my cards and so on. I kept playing on with different designs and I felt I could be anybody. The possibilities were absolutely liberating. It’s realizing big fantasies on such small 2 x 3 spaces. Isn’t that weird?!

There were stars, unicorns, rainbows and bears on one business card. On another, there were paintings of famous artists. On others, there were just these collections of crazy fonts. I printed pastel colors, dark colors, neutral ones, greys and so on.

I even bought all kinds of paper I could get my hands on. Simple bond papers are no good, except of course for text prints. I printed on board stock, on colored paper, on neon paper, paper with metallic finish, pearlized colors, paper with all sorts of texture, and so on. I think I even printed sticker business cards.

Consequently, I learned my ABCs on printing from such experience no matter how limited it may seem.

I knew better what to expect when printing on colored paper, on highly-textured paper or paper with uneven surface, and on paper with a smooth feel versus ones with a rough feel among others..

Nowadays, with the complexity of design software programs and with the confusing resolution, of dpi’s and ppi’s, and file formats, I sometimes wonder “Do we get to toy around with printing and design anymore?” I guess I better buy my Dummy guides soon.