MOO II
My MOO business cards arrived yesterday.
The business card holding box was very solid and cardboard rather than the usual plastic boxes, made from recycled pulp and biodegradable.
The MOO branding was fun & funky, as you’d expect, with a paper wrap on the outside of the card holder declaring
“Quick, schedule a meeting! Your Business Cards have arrived.”
As for the cards themselves I’d placed the company logo on the back of the cards from an original PNG and it looked OK in landscape. On the flipside I’d placed the logo again but in portrait with my details below.
The logo wasn’t as sharp as I expected even though (I thought) I’d supplied a hi-res PNG. The 350gsm card felt a lot flimsier than the cards I created for a client the other week at 400gsm. The lettering was OK – it was from a restricted number of fonts available (about 12) and the choice of formatting was also limited (bold line or not bold line, no bold characters or individual words)
So, on the whole? I like the MOO brand and their marketing, they certainly have an appeal and a personality that is very pleasing. The cards were the “Green uploader” – 100% recycled, totally chlorine free (TCF) and no frills. The limitation of font use and control over the layout was not something a designer likes to have to deal with.
But the price and the relative ease of creating the cards means that they’re are popular and MOO will go far. £14.04 for 50 green cards including delivery (That was with a 10% discount code)
If you’re a designer or you need to impress your clients with a top quality card or your clients expect no less than a spot-varnished sliver of royal standards then it’s probably best to create your business cards in Photoshop or Illustrator and go see your local printer. But if you’re on a budget and need a fistful of cheap, quick cards that are better than the usual entry-level fare then MOO are a good choice.
I’m now going to dig out that issue of Computer Arts with the tutorial on designing for the foil/metallic printing process – I need my cards to look like chrome…
MOO
In the 9 years that I’ve been running 22i design I don’t recall ever having any business cards. That may sound a bit strange but we’ve honestly never really had the need for them.
However, with the latest upturn in business (thanks to all the good people who’ve recommended us) plus recently designing the classy little business cards for ICCTS I decided to dip my toes in the water and thought I’d give the much talked about MOO a try.
Compared to the normal process of designing business cards, where you completely craft the artwork from scratch and send it to your friendly neighbourhood printer, (in our case Charterlith Printers in Fleet) MOO is a simple automated online affair where you pick the type of card you want, upload the artwork, type some text in and then pay.
One of our web clients uses the well-known Vistaprint service for their stationery. You can tell that the print quality and design/style is below what you pay for regular design & print but there is a market out there for cheap business cards.
So whilst we’d dearly love to have dreamt up something along the lines of any one of the 100 really creative business cards (our logo would look great with a bit of spot varnish on a completely matt card) all we’re trying to do here is test out the budget end of the market and, all-in, we paid around £14.04 for 50 double-sided 350gsm 100% recycled card TCF business cards to be printed and delivered (by next Thursday). That’s about 28p a card.
The process was relatively painless but, as a designer, you miss the total control you have over the creative process. There were, for instance, only a dozen or so fonts to choose from and only line-by-line options (for example you can’t increase the weight of, italicise certain words or letters or switch fonts or font sizes).
It’s all very simple and templated however, for the price, you can’t complain so I’ll report back when they arrive; I’m sure they’ll “do the job”.