Seems like it should be such a simple thing.

We ordered some business cards from a local print shop. First clue they might not be very high quality was when they said they could only use a pdf. I’d taken a thumb drive with the card saved as a jpeg. So I went home and emailed the card to them after saving it as a pdf.

Now, I don’t know about your experience, but I’ve never seen a pdf that looked as good as the original. But I thought, okay maybe, and support local business and all that.

So we picked them up yesterday. The card stock was okay. The printing was not crisp. They were not all trimmed to quite the same size. They are not flat.

I could look past all that. The kicker is that they reek. They smell like someone doused them in whatever it is that comes inside of plug-in air “fresheners.” They are so bad, we had to put them in the garage and I’m not sure we will ever be able to use them.

Part of me wants to be frugal and use the cards. But there is also this. They looked great on our computer monitor. They conveyed all the information we wanted to get across. However, seeing them for real, holding one in my hand, I realized: (1) the fonts are a bit too small, (2) the total appearance is cluttered, (3) the thing that stands out the most is the logo, and (4) the whole thing is unbalanced.

I feel that a business card should express the essence of a business. They should be professional. And they should be pleasing to the eye. I feel that as I have designed them, they are not.

I am tempted to write them off as a loss and try the VistaPrint route. I checked them out. They have some very nice templates and fonts and options for glamming up your cards.  But … I did lay some cards out on a window sill yesterday and I just checked them and they do not reek quite as badly. So the cheap part of me is thinking that perhaps these cards are not that bad after all.

Maybe if I sleep on it, actually sleep (been having a hard time with that lately with all the stuff that’s whizzing around in my mind), the answer will come to me.

Image courtesy of A-Z Quotes.