I spent ALL DAY today making a new business card! It finally came out quite nice. Here's the front.
I have to say that Canva is an extremely handy, user-friendly program. I used them last year when I made some cards for my voiceover business, and was super impressed with how fast and easy the process was--and affordable! However, I came to realize that I needed branding that encompassed everything I am into, not just one discipline or the other. When I work for someone, I very much want them to know how many multitudes I contain, otherwise they might get confused. Hence this new card with my own illustrations depicting pet care, design, DJing, voiceover, and of course a rhino and turtle. It will be exciting to see how they turn out once they're printed.
HOWEVER, before resorting to Canva I did the layout myself on two large pages which I then photocopied. My idea was to have the images converted to business-card size and then printed on cards, front and back. It was just a matter of communicating this to my friendly neighborhood printer and dropping off the media. Right?
Wrong!!! Two reputable print shops in the city refused to help (both referred me to Canva), and a third said they could help but the "design" would cost at least $175, above the cost of printing the cards. All three seemed befuddled and slightly contemptuous that I would want to make a business card out of an original drawing on a piece of paper--something I did easily about ten years ago when I made a run of dog walker cards that served me very well and have just run out.
I'm unhappy with this situation. It shouldn't be so hard to get this kind of service done in a big city, and I suspect that the very existence of apps like Canva has all but killed jobs like this. BUT I guess that speaks to the kind of DIY operation I myself like to do, that I myself am rooting for and doing my best to create. Seeing the absence of it just underscores how needed it is. Maybe?