Erica Swallow's Blog

My new business cards, designed by Snow Powers at Moo.com

Moo.com is hosting a contest, giving away $250,000 worth of design consultation. It’s called The Business Card Project. With six designers working on the project, they’ve already begun to make progress on redesigning business cards for all types of companies. They’re giving away 500 sets redesigned business cards! If you’ve got a card that needs help, apply now. And if you love my new card design, rate it here to put it in the running for the People’s Choice Award!

Some of you may already know that I’m a contest junkie — I’ve recently won a SxSW video contest, Real Housewives Foursquare swag,  and the John Caples Student Campaign of the Year Award. So when I saw that Moo.com, my favorite printing company, was giving away design consultations and free 100-pack minicards (or 50-pack business cards), I had to enter.

As you can see from the photo above, the cards turned out BEAUTIFUL. They capture everything about me that I want to exude: my love of orange, my geeky side and the fact that my last name is a BIRD, people!

Beforehand, my cards weren’t horrible, but they weren’t at their best, either. I ordered my first pack of minicards early last year and was so excited that I blogged about them (see here). The second order came late last year when I stocked up on a 400-pack. Here’s what they currently look like:

My old business cards, designed by me, featuring photos taken by me.

Not so bad, right? But when you compare the two designs, the new cards shine like gold!

I have to give mad props to the designer of my new cards, Snow White Powers.

Snow Powers, graphic designer working on The Business Card Project at the Moo.com office in Providence, Rhode Island. Nice work space, Snow!

Snow has been drawing since she was 10 years old and has always been interested in all types of art, but she’s been focusing on designing and illustrating for the past four years. She just graduated from Washington University in St. Louis this past summer with a degree in Communication Design. She just recently moved to Providence, Rhode Island to work as a graphic designer on The Business Card Project with Moo.com.

I asked Snow for the skivvy on life at Moo. I’m a big fan, what can I say? She gave me some insider information on the design team. She says they “request to get more string cheese in our fridge here every Friday as our daily snack at work. Once the giant pack of 50 string cheeses gets here, we eat all of it by the end of the day. We love string cheese.” Gotta love cheese, and you gotta love that team spirit.

As you can see from the cards at the top of this post, Snow has a great eye for design. But more importantly, I can vouch for her amazing knack for designing to specs. I told her my favorite color was orange, that I’d like to incorporate a QR code and some minimalist contact details along with a photo, and she ran with it, incorporating my social side the whole way through.

Here’s a sound bite from Snow on the design process:

“What I enjoyed most is being able to work with the fun style of your picture as well as incorporating orange, a color that I wouldn’t ever usually touch, believe it or not. I wanted a card that would be clever and reflective of your knowledge of social networking and technology, so the first thing that came to mind for me was chattering birds on a telephone wire. It worked perfect for me to include “swallows.”

A difficult part was consolidating a ton of information into a very small card and still making it look sleek and easy to read… this was the first mini-card redesign that I have done and it’s difficult to take the same amount of info that is already hard to fit on your standard sized-card and shrink it to half its size.”

Thank you to Snow Powers and Moo.com for doing such an amazing job with the redesign of my business cards. They look amazing.

To all the readers out there, if you’re business cards are needing a bit of help, I highly recommend Moo.com’s services. Apply now for their Business Card Project contest! If you don’t make the cut, definitely check out their site and consider designing your own cards on their platform. And don’t forget to rate my new card!