I'm a big fan of author and publisher CJ Chivers' blog. However, as a business card fetishist I must take issue with one of his more recent posts.
I have a love-hate relationship with business cards. On the one hand, I hate paper. I get rid of it as quickly as humanly possible. I take photos of receipts using the
Shoeboxed iPhone
app on my phone and then toss them before I even leave the restaurant. I always select emailed invoices and bank statements where possible, and I scan any dead tree material that comes into my house on a
Neat Company Inc scanner, shred the paper, and then use it for my wormery. No, seriously. Worms apparently have a thing for shredded parking tickets, in particular.
The same goes for most business cards. If someone isn't willing to Bump phones with me I'll generally scan their business card into
Evernote, or read it with a
business card scanning app, and then chuck it.
That said, I'm a sucker for good design. A well-designed business card is a thing of beauty. The problem is that most of them aren't well designed. They're small, white slabs of boring. A morgue table, if you will, for the imagination.
Anything about business card design piques my interest, so CJ Chivers' blog post,
Drawing a Blank, caught my eye. The basic idea is that, instead of laying out hundreds of quid for personal business cards to give to potential employers, you simply write your own. Use really nice card stock, he says, but don't print anything on it. Instead, you can just dash off your email address (or whatever else you want to say) on the card, presumably using your gold-plated Cross fountain pen for that added panache. What better way, says CJ, to give your business card a personalised aura, and have the recipient feel the love?
That's all well and good, until you're in a group meeting and have to give out five business cards at once (scribble, scribble). Or until you're at a trade show trying to drum up potential gigs, and are giving out tens of business cards in rapid succession, thus giving yourself RSI. It just isn't going to work.
I tend to go the other way. I have to get some business cards printed soon, because I keep getting embarrassed by not having any. Quietly fixing people with a steely glare and saying, "If you want me, you'll find me" is starting to lose its effect. So, I'm going to automate the heck out of my business cards, and give people as much information as they could possibly want in as few pixels as possible.
Enter the QR code. Those cryptic little black and white critters can carry hidden messages if only you know how to read them. Or, rather, if your phone knows how to read them.
Apps to scan QR codes with built-in cameras are now available for all smart phone platforms. Scanning a code can make a phone do everything from jumping to a page for an app download, through to asking the user if they want to add your details to their contact database. You can make QR codes with embedded Google Maps locations, or events that can drop straight into a mobile phone's calendar system.
It's obvious that QR codes could be a novel and interesting way to offer a wealth of information to prospective employers. One option might be a QR'd URL pointing to your LinkedIn site, which can increasingly serve as a CV these days. Or you could link to your personal blog. If you want to hedge your bets, you could use a
landing site that gives people access to everything from one single page.
QRstuff.com lets you create the codes easily, and even gives you the option to put them on hats and mugs, should you be so inclined. I'd rather customise mine with a copy of Adobe Illustrator. The thing about QR codes is that they're remarkably tolerant to 'noise' in the image, and can also be displayed in different colours (as long as you stick to dark code data on a light background. Look at this:
And this:
Point your phone at them, and they actually scan and take you places online. It turns out that form really does follow function.
And some smart alec made a sign.
Cutting a stylized office sign out of plastic or wood that gives you all of the company's details when you scan it is just too cool for words. But let's start with business cards, and you can go and get yourself an office sign when you've made your first million, eh?
