So, in my effort to build a recognizable and easily identifiable "brand" image now that I'm looking for work, I've decided I need business cards. There are free services out there (1, 2) that will print you 200-250 basic business cards, but you have to work within their templates. Most of the templates are structured for people who actually have jobs, so those of us who are "in transition" either need to work with the inherent structure of the template or go somewhere else. I did try to work within the inherent structure of the template, but combined with the somewhat blasé free designs, my "situation" didn't seem to map well enough.

So I downloaded a shareware program called Business Card Composer. It's remarkably flexible and smart, allowing you to import background images, lighten them, make them black and white, etc. There are also very smart drawing tools and text tools (for instance, changing fonts on the entire business card is very easy). Overall I'm impressed with this app, and I'll probably pay for it. This is important because in order to use the online business card services with your own art work, you gotta pay. Thus, I need to pay for the software ($39.95 to remove the "unregistered" mark from the final image) and then pay for the business card people to print my art work. I know, I know, I could just pop down to the local office supply store and buy some business card paper, re-make the art work in Fireworks, import everything into Word, and then print it myself. The biggest problem with all that (aside from the tedious reconstruction of the art work) is that I don't have a color printer that's good enough. The online people will laser it on nice paper, which is better than the cheapo Avery paper I'm sure.

So, after all that explanation, here's what I've come up with (please excuse the fuzziness and de-saturation of the colors):