We stood on our heads, meditated, recited our sacred mantra and STILL failed to come up with a theme for this edition of Cool Cards. This week, we take a peek at a melding of high-tech paper cards and music, admire hand-painted ones for a website about Italian travel, and savor the level of detail to be found in a trio of wooden cards for an illustrator. (Previous Cool Cards of the Week can be found here.)
Beatie Wolfe Card Album
MOO is as savvy about promoting their business card printing services as they are about producing quality cards. Therefore it was only a matter of time before they found a unique way to get their recently announced NFC-enabled business cards into people’s hands. They put their heads together with London singer Beatie Wolfe to release her next album, Montagu Square, as a deck of NFC cards. Each “beautifully printed” card will contain a song you can play when you tap it against your NFC-enabled phone. While the whole thing sounds like a tremendous pain in the neck, it is the first time this has been done as far as we know. Wolfe has form in “world’s firsts” having released her debut album, “8ight,” as a 3D interactive mobile app back in 2013.
Italian Travel Site Business Card
You don’t always have to throw the latest printing and finishing techniques at your business card to make it captivating. Eva Black Design did an amazing job for Bianca Gignac at ItalianFix.com. As Eva explains:
“…we had to figure a way to translate her watercolor swatch from her logo onto her letterpressed cards. So I presented the idea that we could hand paint each card after printing – and Bianca decided she would tackle it herself!”
The result is tantalizingly tactile, and the watercolor can’t help but make us think of fine Italian wine.
Illustrator’s Business Card
We’re not big on wooden business cards overall (wood veneer ones being the exception), but every once in a while we see some that make us realize that they do have their virtues. James Dormer Schneider came up with three different varieties to show off some of his illustrations; you can’t help but admire the level of detail he was able to achieve.
