Oh, business cards. How I love thee.
You may be impractical in this modern, paperless age. You may be expensive to print and difficult to design. You may languish on my desk in boxes, largely untouched, because I so rarely have occasion to hand you out.
And yet, still, I love you.
Recently I got annoyed with my old biz cards because I noticed they didn’t have my Twitter handle on them. I think your Twitter handle is one of the only pieces of information people will ever use when you hand them a business card, at least in web-based industries like the one I work in. So it seemed like a massive oversight that my card was missing mine.
I typed “business card” into Pinterest’s search box and pored over the results for design inspiration. I sketched out possible designs on index cards, because I am a dork. Then I opened up InDesign and Photoshop and got down to business (cards).
I’d had the idea to make my card reversible. The upper-left corner would list all my “real-life identity” details, like my journalism portfolio website, vanilla Twitter handle, and phone number. If you spun the card 180 degrees, the new upper-left corner would have all my Girly Juice deets: my blog URL, email, Twitter, and so on.
While I keep those two identities staunchly separate on the interwebz, most people I meet in real life will find out about my sex blogging sooner or later. So I don’t mind handing out a card that “outs” me as a loquacious, lascivious loudmouth.
The back of the card bears a circle filled with sex-related words and phrases. This helps unify my sex journalism with my sex blogging, while pointing out some areas within sexuality that are of particular interest to me: feminism, gender, body image, masturbation, sex toys, and so on.
My old business card design had a big silhouette of a rabbit vibrator on the back. I liked it, but I got feedback from some vanilla friends and colleagues that they sometimes felt embarrassed if they opened up their wallet in public and someone got a glimpse of my card in there. So I decided to go with a (slightly) more low-key design this time around.
I designed the card in my blog’s colors, which are also my favorite colors: bright turquoise and hot pink. When they were printed (by VistaPrint, if you’re wondering), the pink came out darker than it looked in my original design – it’s more of a deep fuchsia. But I don’t mind; I still think it looks pretty rad.
Sex-industry peeps: how do you deal with the issue of business cards? Do you keep separate ones for your vanilla life and your sexy life, or do you combine them somehow? Do you even use business cards at all? I’d love to geek out about ’em with you in the comments section!