Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

https://olivierpieters.be/blog/2017/02/11/designing-a-business-card-in-latex

by opieters • 9 years ago

363 219 9 years ago

Jonovono3• 9 years ago

Nice!

I recently re-did my business cards. Pretty happy with how they came out: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C25LX0bXAAAWWYL.jpg:large

vvpan• 9 years ago

That domain name is pretty bold! I am very much amused.

gravypod• 9 years ago

Where do I order cards like these?

Jonovono3• 9 years ago

Ordered through moo.com :)

tedmiston3• 9 years ago

Really nice how you pulled off name + email + website in one line.

davnn• 9 years ago

Awesome, I much prefer a creative idea than knowing the tool used for creation.

saalaa• 9 years ago

Hey, what font did you use? One notable feature is that the @ is very circular which is quite rare with fixed fonts.

Jonovono3• 9 years ago

It's called Cutive Mono! Took awhile to settle on one :p

TwoBit• 9 years ago

Serious question: Is LaTeX used outside academia these days?

Avshalom• 9 years ago

Hell I think it's just barely hanging on in acedamia

Cyph0n• 9 years ago

That's definitely not the case in computer science and electrical engineering at least. LaTeX definitely isn't great, but I don't see a viable alternative.

theophrastus• 9 years ago

In my current experience with states-side academia: draw a line between the most math/theoretical departments through physics and end up at the engineering departments. The tendency to use TeX/LaTeX follows that line from a relatively high probability to zero on arrival to engineering. In European academia it stays reasonable high throughout.

zzleeper• 9 years ago

Hell, even in academia people hate it =\

XaspR8d• 9 years ago

I honestly miss LaTeX a lot, especially the quality of documents I could create with it (when I was in academia). Hopefully I'll get a chance to do a white paper later this year and bust out the skills.

But I am totally willing to accept my role as an outlier... I even wrote a small TeX package at one point, so I'm aware it's not a "fun" system. :P

opieters4• 9 years ago

I think it's not perfect, but for many academic purposes, LaTeX is still the best tool in my opinion. It's definitely not perfect, but there's a lot of historical weight and quirks, but the results look great if a little effort is spent. :)

twblalock• 9 years ago

I'm not sure why you were downvoted. Most of the academics I know hate it. They use it because certain journals require it, or their advisor makes them use it.

robinhoodexe• 9 years ago

Check out http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/40720/latex-in-indust....

I like the one about the Deutsche Bahn (german railway company) using TeX to typeset the time tables on the train stations.

fhars2• 9 years ago

But is it still true?

The downloadable files containing several time tables say:

    Creator:        Adobe InDesign CS6 (Windows)
    Producer:       Acrobat Distiller 10.1.16 (Windows)

While the ones with just a single one say:

    Creator:        Hafas Print Bahnhofstafeln 4.6.5
    Producer:       PDFlib 9.0.5 (Win32)

oever• 9 years ago

"Mastering MuseScore" was written in LaTeX.

The presentation and content are excellent.

https://musescore.org/en/node/64711

analog31• 9 years ago

I work in scientific instrumentation, on the product development side. I've never seen LaTeX output (unless it's been well concealed) in a report or paper.

What I'm seeing is that the use of typesetting and even its cousin, word processing, are generally going downhill. My employer has largely given up on print advertising. If we write papers, they're for the more commercial oriented journals or trade mags, that don't use TeX for their own typesetting.

More and more, I see stuff that's just written in the e-mail editor, with graphics copy-pasta'd from screen captures, or directly into web based services such as Office 365. Or, PowerPoint (with all of the pitfalls described by Edward Tufte).

Word processing has practically been relegated to documents that nobody reads, such as functional procedures and announcements from HR.

I realize this all sounds kind of cynical, but I hope is taken in good humor. However, the gist is that writing and correspondence are becoming increasingly informal.

simias2• 9 years ago

I use it when I need to write some documents (user guides etc...). If the alternative is open office or some other "WYSIWYG" editor I'll take LaTeX any time.

I don't really love it though, I find myself using org-mode more and more for that purpose, then I let emacs generate the latex code for my doc. It's not nearly as flexible but it works well and your source is a lot more readable.

I also use LaTeX for my resume, if you find a good theme they end up looking pretty sharp and professional with little work.

pbtflakes• 9 years ago

If you're converting Org documents to PDF, you can use Pandoc (http://pandoc.org/) to automatically convert & send through pdfLaTeX.

0xffff2• 9 years ago

I do EECS research in the aerospace industry. Every journal we ever submit to either requires or accepts Latex. I also used it regularly to write reports as an undergrad. At least in the EECS side of the engineering field, Latex is alive and well.

username223• 9 years ago

Yes. I just wrote a guidebook with it. It's not that great if you want to do a full-color glossy thing, but the results are way better than using something like Word.

rev_bird• 9 years ago

I'm finishing up a 350+ page family history book that I wrote in LaTeX; I've got two or three more to go, and I wouldn't consider using anything else. It's got its quirks, but it was so easy to work with page formatting, footnotes/endnotes, and sections that it made up for all the fiddly issues I ran into with images. I have also been using the genealogytree[0] package (which relies on TikZ, coincidentally used by OP) to draw diagrams programatically. In addition to satisfying my scripting itch, it looks beautiful despite my unlearned eye for graphic design.

Related: I wrote a resume in LaTeX a few years ago. After an in-person interview, the manager took me to meet the team: When we walked in, they were crowded around a monitor arguing about figure out how I'd made such a cool-looking CV. It probably didn't actually look all that good, but anything that isn't Word stands out nowadays.

neonkiwi• 9 years ago

I'm very curious to see this CV!

seanmcdirmid5• 9 years ago

I thought my Latex CVs were great, but my wife always does better in...Illustrator out of all programs.

graycat12• 9 years ago

For longer documents in TeX, I wrote a collection of TeX macros for to make cross referencing easy. The collection was a little tricky to write but is fairly easy to use and works great. The package is based on some logical names that serve as, say, pointers; then in one place define such a name and in other places refer to it and get the page number, etc. inserted where the reference is made. Given some simple examples, it's really easy to use. I have a simple macro for my favorite text editor that will create a new, the next according to one scheme, such logical name. Having an easy way to have cross references is nice.

I also have something similar but simpler for bibliographic references.

TeX, some TeX macros, a good text editor with a good macro language (e.g., KEdit), and a good spell checker (e.g., ASpell with the last TeX distribution I got) are super good writing tools to have.

pmoriarty4• 9 years ago

I've also published multiple books for myself and my friends and family using LaTeX, use LaTeX whenever I want to print out and post or distribute an article that looks crappy in the original, and I've long written my resumes in LaTeX.

vivekd• 9 years ago

Yes, I am a lawyer with mind dyslexia and I often got into trouble for missing stuff on my letters or rearranging the letters of things like the other parties names or case numbers etc. So I use the LaTeX letter document class and import the other parties information from an adr file. That way I only have to type the darn thing once. I think I can automate more stuff on documents where I often make errors but I'm just getting started with LaTeX. It's been a big stress reliever for me.

JumpCrisscross2• 9 years ago

Interesting. I always instruct my lawyers to reference all counterparty information only once, either in the header or preferably in the signature block, and then make everything else reference an impersonal defined term. I hate transaction-specific information being littered randomly around a document.

kashyapc2• 9 years ago

FWIW, I prefer to use it (LaTex with Beamer) to make technical presentations at conferences. This[1] was my most recent output.

Though, I spent way too much time than I care to admit making those, especially tweaking the TikZ 'diagrams' (first time I tried) that can be seen later in the slides. I find it quite convincing.

I'm pleased with the end result.

[1] http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/...

mpweiher• 9 years ago

Yes.

For example, I wrote "iOS and macOS Performance Tuning: Cocoa, Cocoa Touch, Objective-C, and Swift"[1][2] using LaTeX, and I think it came out rather well (Pearson has some pretty amazing LaTeX compositors that took my rough ramblings and turned them into something beautiful).

Quite a while ago, I also used TeX (not LaTeX, IIRC) as part of the typesetting backend of a database publishing tool for the international ISBN agency, to publish the PID (Publisher's International Directory). This was a challenging project. IIRC, each of the directories (there were several) was >1000 pages, 4 column text in about a 4 point font. Without chapter breaks. My colleagues tried FrameMaker first on a subset, they let it run overnight and by morning it had kernel-panicked the NeXTStation we were running it on. The box had run out of swap.

TeX was great, it just chugged away at around 1-4 pages per second and never missed a beat. Customer was very happy. The most difficult part was getting TeX not to try so hard to get a "good layout", which wasn't possible given the constraints and for these types of entries just made everything looks worse.

[1] https://www.pearsonhighered.com/program/Weiher-i-OS-and-mac-...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321842847/ref=as_li_tl?ie...

tikhonj• 9 years ago

I work on supply chain optimization at Target, and we write lots of internal documents in TeX. Admittedly the team has a relatively academic background—many PhDs in math, CS and OR—but it's still industry use :).

Some Word/PowerPoint creeps in as well, but I highly prefer the TeX documents. They look better, are easier to edit/reuse and slot neatly into Git. I really wish more people used it (or Markdown or whatever) instead of Office nonsense.

disgruntledphd23• 9 years ago

Completely agreed (happy LaTeX user in industry). However, I have recently been using org-mode for emacs and treating LaTeX as one possible output format. Being able to output to HTML/markdown is really useful for automating import into more commonly used tools.

For anything with non-trivial maths or structure, I'd still use LaTeX, but it's very nice to have an (easier, more portable) choice of output formats.

apepe• 9 years ago

Unlike what most LaTeX users may think, LaTeX is actually not even widely adopted in academia, with less than 20% of scholarly articles published every year written using LaTeX (https://www.authorea.com/107393-how-many-scholarly-articles-...). That said, it is the only powerful option to professional typeset mathematical notation. And for that reason, it is used by few in some non-academic research fields (military, gov, pharma, tech, HN readers).

bnegreve• 9 years ago

If I read the blog post I learn that

- Latex is widely adopted in hard science.

- Latex is not widely used in other disciplines such as sport science.

I think this matches with what most latex users think.

arca_vorago• 9 years ago

As a sysadmin I use it, though to be fair most often in the form of emacs org-mode export to latex because I like the way it makes stuff look (so I'm not editing in latex unless I need to for some reason, which you can do in snippets inside org mode). Resumes, and anything I want to be formal such as latters and invitations I also use it for.

wtbob5• 9 years ago

Well, this was in academia and it was a long time ago, but when I was in college at the turn of the century I used it. Once I noticed that the exact same paper got a whole extra grade in LaTeX, I never went back to word processors.

jakobegger• 9 years ago

These are really beautiful business cards.

But man, does anybody actually get value out of their business cards? No interesting opportunity has ever come up for me as a result of sharing business cards.

At some point I stopped taking them with me. I still have a bunch of them in my desk drawer, they're very outdated, and I only use them for grocery lists.

Is that just me, or are business cards going out of fashion in general?

Frondo• 9 years ago

I think the answer is, it depends. In the circles where I vend stuff, if you don't have one, people look at you as a grade-A idiot. Like you showed up to a meeting without pants/a skirt on.

Heck, even when I go to startup meetups, everyone asks for a card (medium-sized Pacific Northwest city).

If they're going out of style, they're still fashionable here.

jrickert• 9 years ago

I hand them out frequently. Sometimes to people I already know who want my contact information. It's easier to hand someone a card versus disrupting an interesting conversation to exchange details.

BucketSort• 9 years ago

We got our first big break 4 months ago by giving out a business card. You have to make a connection first before you slip the card. I think your experience is more a reflection of your selling skills than anything.

chrisseaton3• 9 years ago

Don't travel to Japan without business cards. It's really awkward when everyone gives you one and asks for one back, as I think exchanging them is an important part of meeting someone there.

Tharkun• 9 years ago

Indeed. Remember: accept them with both hands and briefly inspect them. It's the polite thing to do.

Gracana• 9 years ago

What sort of opportunity are you imagining?

I trade cards with vendor sales reps and support people who visit. They have my info so they can let me know about new products or obsolescence issues, and I have their info so I can call them for support and product information.

user59944613• 9 years ago

Is that just me, or are business cards going out of fashion in general?

Because you don't do business obviously.

When you go to events, business shows, networking events, conferences, hiring fair... you give business cards to your contact so they can remember who you are and contact you back. It is very important.

jasonm23• 9 years ago

Really interesting business cards, simply cannot look like a business card, and the direct communication features (contact details) are secondary.

If a business card can delight people who receive it, then it has a point.

In this epoch, if sharing contact details requires a hardcopy, I'm of the opinion that it's of very limited value. Although it's useful to have business cards for many locales, since they are a customary item. (In many parts of Asia, it's essential)

So, if a card can communicate some meta information (sense of creativity, problem solving, good humor etc.) That's going to have value. It will create an interesting memory.

I think it's worth having a few designs made, but it's a matter of ROI.

If you think you need a business card, think about why, where and who they are for.

throwayguestman2• 9 years ago

If a business card can delight people who receive it, then it has a point.

The first rule of the advertising club is AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. A business card should draw attention, if only to distract from the terribly clichéd action of handing over a business card :)

ci5er• 9 years ago

I'm guessing that you don't live in Japan. There, opportunities may or may not come after you have executed your card exchange, but don't leave home without them.

JumpCrisscross2• 9 years ago

I regularly hire and contract out work based on business cards hauled from conferences, travel, et cetera. At the end of the evening I make notes on the back. (Right after meeting someone interesting, I crease a corner.)

teddyh• 9 years ago

Just out of curiosity, what do you do with a card which has one of its corners creased already?

FabHK4• 9 years ago

As other poster said, business cards are important in Asia (not only Japan). Hand it over and receive it with two hands, inspect it carefully, hold it or leave it on the table for a while (don't just stuff it away immediately).

Having said that, I have for a while now used a dedicated email address for business cards to track its effectiveness, and extremely rarely receive anything on there.

DonaldFisk4• 9 years ago

I made mine using LaTeX for VL/HCC 2016. It's on http://web.onetel.com/~hibou/blog/VLHCC2016.html

I repeated enough times to fill a page, printed it, and cut the cards.

seanmcdirmid5• 9 years ago

Nice environment! But...why do justified on a webpage?

DonaldFisk4• 9 years ago

Thanks.

I think the pages look better when justified. Also, the width is about the same as a typical book, so you don't have to move your eyes much when reading it.

jilljennV3• 9 years ago

In March 2014, I attended a conference in Atlanta. In the subway, some nice guy told me I had to make business cards for the conference. So I went to some kinko and asked:

- How much for 250 business cards? - $69. - If I provide a PDF and just ask you to print and cut, can you do it for today? - Yes. - How much? - $39. Do you have the file? - Yes.

It was a lie. I opened a new LaTeX document and typed this thing, thanks to Stack Overflow.

https://github.com/jilljenn/business-card

gruez• 9 years ago

some nice guy told me I had to make business cards for the conference

why? are they checking for business cards at the entrance or something?

Kluny• 9 years ago

Every person you meet is going to ask what you do, that's the moment to hand over your card.

chrisseaton3• 9 years ago

I don't understand. What was the lie?

aseipp• 9 years ago

I believe he means when he responded "Yes" to the final question (as in "Yes, I have the PDF file for the business card"), he was lying and had nothing. So he quickly searched SO and found what he needed.

Sometimes, that's just what Stack Overflow is there for: a quickly accessible CYA!

aw3c2• 9 years ago

I don't quite get why LaTeX is special here. You could have done the same in Inkscape, Word or whatever other text stuff related program.

wycx• 9 years ago

Even better, you could layout with Inkscape AND typeset the text with LaTeX using textext: https://bitbucket.org/pitgarbe/textext

NelsonMinar• 9 years ago

If you're going to go through all the trouble of typesetting a business card in LaTeX, you really ought to use Computer Modern Roman so that folks know you typeset it in LaTeX. (Related; resumes in CMR always have +10 credibility.)

opieters4• 9 years ago

I think this need not be the case. When creating this, I wanted it to look good and the way I wanted it. Not make it scream "LaTeX".

For a CV, Computer Modern might be more apt since there's also more text on it. But again, why make it scream LaTeX if one can do it more subtle and make it more personal at the same time?

Do note that I have a LaTeX PDF style CV as well, but it's not linked in the article (nor available online).

bhickey2• 9 years ago

I edit a genre fiction and we do all our layout in XeTeX. I picked it because it's the right tool for the job, and I don't know PageMaker. The colophon calls attention to it because I think it's helpful to tell others how you made something (typefaces, tools, etc.) rather than for nerd cred.

https://www.aliterate.org/aliterate-page47.pdf

The typefaces are Minion and Myriad.

jessriedel• 9 years ago

why make it scream LaTeX if one can do it more subtle and make it more personal at the same time?

Because the point of a business card is to effectively signal your impressiveness.

irfansharif• 9 years ago

Do note that I have a LaTeX PDF style CV as well, but it's not linked in the article (nor available online).

any particular reason why? i for one would love to see it.

nextos4• 9 years ago

Exactly. Good TeX should simply yield to good typography. Nice ligations, etc.

I dont like Computer Modern too much. I am very fond of Gentium [1]. For math, I love Euler [2], which is used in Concrete Mathematics.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentium

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMS_Euler

zeamaize• 9 years ago

Then why do it in TeX as opposed to Inkscape?

kashyapc2• 9 years ago

Me nods. I clicked on it with a 100% expectation to see Computer Modern Roman (CMR) font, only to be surprised. Not that I was repulsed with what I saw. Still nice, but I'd have also posted a variant with CMR. :-)

IshKebab• 9 years ago

That's why I always install CMR in MS Word.

Handy link (because it's actually quite hard to find): http://concentriclivers.appspot.com/LatinModernTTFHinted.7z

seanmcdirmid5• 9 years ago

Word kerning and hyphenation still sucks, so -10.

Seriously, there are many places (CS publishing) where there are biases against papers written in Word.

andrewshadura2• 9 years ago

http://cm-unicode.sourceforge.net/

Odenwaelder• 9 years ago

I once made a visual comparison between Word and LaTeX using CMR: http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/110219/14827

pavlov3• 9 years ago

Computer Modern is a hideous font. It's particularly terrible when rendered in Postscript/PDF, which is how almost all documents produced with it actually get read.

But the +10 credibility is absolutely true. It's like CS grunge style: when you wear ugly clothes, you look more authentic.

marvy5• 9 years ago

How is Computer Modern much worse than, say, Times New Roman?

trav4225• 9 years ago

Heh, I was assuming NelsonMinar was being sarcastic. But yeah -- it's all about the audience. :)

jacobolus3• 9 years ago

Computer Modern is now one of the most overused typefaces on the planet. It looks great for that “Victorian-era American-style math paper” look.

People should mostly avoid it otherwise, IMO. There are plenty of better alternatives for typesetting pretty mathematics.

* * *

More generally about the thread here, TeX is not a productive or effective tool for making business cards or other heavily graphical documents. The point of TeX is to handle standard typesetting of structured prose and mathematical notation. Any time you need flexible layout control, TeX turns into more trouble than it’s worth.

Someone using a dedicated graphical page layout or vector graphics tool is going to make a better business card (or poster, or flyer, or diagram, or ...) in less time, in a way which is much easier to modify later.

yellowapple3• 9 years ago

Compared to Times New Roman? Arial/Helvetica? Calibri? Comic Sans and Papyrus?

I'd hardly put Computer Modern in anywhere near the same category.

marvy5• 9 years ago

On the one hand, I tend to agree with you. I used LaTeX (with beamer) to make several slideshows over the past few years, and it seems safe to say that this is not the exactly the kind of thing that plays to TeX's strengths.

On the other hand, there exist wizards who do things like this:

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/134638/showcase-tex-...

(check out the pink one with hearts; note that it uses random numbers so it doesn't even come out the same way each time, try doing that with anything but TeX (just don't ask why you'd want to); there's also one other that also used random numbers)

FabHK4• 9 years ago

TeX is not a productive or effective tool for making business cards or other heavily graphical documents.

Agreed. See the study "An Efficiency Comparison of Document Preparation Systems Used in Academic Research and Development" which concludes

"LaTeX users were slower than Word users, wrote less text in the same amount of time, and produced more typesetting, orthographical, grammatical, and formatting errors. On most measures, expert LaTeX users performed even worse than novice Word users."

The study does claim though that LaTeX users had more fun while doing worse work, so there's that... :-)

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

sneak2• 9 years ago

It was this very reason that I used the CMR webfont to typeset my Jekyll blog (https://sneak.berlin). It's sort of a nerd shibboleth.

joezydeco• 9 years ago

I'll take the opposing view.

When I see a resume in CMR I get the signal that the applicant still has their head in academia. That can be good or bad, in my particular field it's not that great.

jlardinois• 9 years ago

I typeset my resume in LaTeX, but I ended up formatting it so it looked almost exactly like it did in Word. I should probably update that at some point.

But I did throw a \LaTeX macro in the skills section, so anyone familiar LaTeX should notice.

usaphp• 9 years ago

Has anyone ever used QR codes on the business cards or store doors? It seems like a waste of space, you need to have a special app on your phone to read it. I think most people don't use that.

joemi2• 9 years ago

As an iOS user, I always assumed QR code reading was just built into Android's camera app. Is that not so?

mastax• 9 years ago

(from memory, may be out of date)

The AOSP camera app does not support QR code reading, and neither does Google's camera app. Many Android phones will have one or both of these installed. Most phones also come with a manufacturer-specific camera app. I know new-ish Motorola phones will read QR codes, and I suspect that the "kitchen sink" vendors like Samsung would as well.

hadrien01• 9 years ago

It's built in Windows Phone's camera app, but in Android phones I've tested, there's no QR code recognition.

user59944613• 9 years ago

Nope. Can't read QR code an android out of the box.

You need to get 1 out of 100 applications from the app store, that competes for the one who can shows the most ads and be the least effective at decoding the picture.

Are you saying that the iPhone camera can read QR code out of the box?

Normal_gaussian3• 9 years ago

Kind of.

Google Now has QR code reading built in, if you have a QR code on the screen (e.g through a camera app) you can have google now scan the screen by holding the home button.

I don't remember having to enable it, but if it isn't enabled for android users you can go into Google Now settings and enable "Screen Search".

will_pseudonym• 9 years ago

Exactly. It doesn't save the user much time at all, if any, and it detracts from the simplicity of a clean design. It's a solution in search of a problem.

sneak2• 9 years ago

http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com

OJFord• 9 years ago

Right; I mean, I guess I could scan it to find out - but what is it, a link to OP's website?

What could it possibly be that's easier to convey through a QR code - especially given that it's on a bit of paper you can keep.

swiley• 9 years ago

I usually put a vcard on them rather than a link (especially on business cards) then you don't have type things into your phone.

kemayo2• 9 years ago

It's a complete vCard. So if you scan it, you get an "add to your contacts?" prompt.

kemayo2• 9 years ago

I've actually-used QR codes once or twice, in the last... six years. I still have software that'll scan them installed, but just because Scanbot coincidentally does it as a side-effect of what I actually use it for.

That said, the use on this card of encoding a complete vCard is actually pretty decent. It's not a tiny URL which you could enter in a few seconds.

wtbob5• 9 years ago

One of the first apps I install on my phone is ZXing's Barcode Scanner, specifically so I can scan QR codes. On Android, it's hands-down the easiest way to post WiFi details for a LAN party or similar (no idea how to do it with iPhones — maybe Apple sells some $99 AirWiFiScanner thing?).

I'll scan 'em to see if there's useful info there. I'm a little concerned that there may be some way to do something malicious with a QR code, but I don't believe I've ever seen a POC.

I'll also use them to set up TOTP. Incredibly easy.

Honestly, I wish that they were used more often. In my experience they work flawlessly.

kneel• 9 years ago

I use snapchat, it picks up QR. It's my default camera just in case I want to caption something.

netsharc• 9 years ago

Most phones nowadays have a shortcut button from the lock screen to open the camera, I wish the phone companies would have one shortcut for a barcode scanner. Or in the camera app, have an extra button to turn the scanner on -- mine has "take picture" and "take video", the scanner reads the live preview until ut recognizes a barcode.

50CNT• 9 years ago

Not on business cards & store doors, but WeChat Pay and Alipay both use QR codes for payment, so anywhere between 1-5 times a day. The washing machines downstairs too.

guitarbill• 9 years ago

I think it might have been easier starting with the `standalone` document class vs `article`, then you don't have to spend so much time on set-up. You just have to make sure the tikz pictures are the right size, and standalone will put each picture on a new page.

gellman• 9 years ago

I would love to use this to design my lab badges as well :)

jilljennV3• 9 years ago

What about http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/67746/combining-paths...?

slbenfica2• 9 years ago

I bet Knuth wouldn't be happy to hear that LaTeX was used to design Business Cards

graycat12• 9 years ago

First, Knuth did TeX, Plain TeX, and was not the primary force behind LaTeX.

Second, IIRC, Knuth did proudly use TeX to print dinner menu, invitations, or some such.

adtac• 9 years ago

Knuth did proudly use TeX to print dinner menu

That's hilarious. Any sources on that?

That man is incredible.

slbenfica2• 9 years ago

Out of curiosity, what was the most beautiful thing you've seen designed/made in LaTeX?

biofox• 9 years ago

http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/showcase-of-beau...

amelius• 9 years ago

You don't need an advanced text formatting system to design a business card. Any system that allows you to place short strings of text at any desired (x,y) position will do just fine. In fact, such a simple system might be better at not getting in your way.

NegativeK• 9 years ago

The author addresses this in the second paragraph.

I picked LaTeX because I want to have a platform independent implementation and because why not? I really like making LaTeX documents, so this seemed like something other than creating long documents.

tedmiston3• 9 years ago

I've done my resume in CSS for a decade now (with print media styles to generate a PDF) for this reason.

I don't currently use business cards but if that changed would probably do the same.

rangibaby2• 9 years ago

Looks nice but:

Hex colors don't map to CMYK at all. Your printer may be able to use a non-CMYK color using a special ink but that may cost more.

There are no crop marks or bleed. You'll want to add them.

sokoloff3• 9 years ago

Those particular RGB colors map well into the CMYK gamut and will be readily printed by any competent printer using a 4-color process.

https://support.dma.ucla.edu/help/tutorials/print_color_guid... has more information on the two color spaces' overlap.

The front side design is very tolerant of inherent printing tolerances, but the backside design is poor (in that it will highlight, rather than hide, the inherent tolerances in cutting). The human eye can readily see the difference in thickness of the white border. A far more tolerant design would take the green fill all the way to the edge. It's not the end of the world to have the backside of your business card have slightly uneven margins, but if you're equally happy with a full fill (and you bleed it beyond the cut lines), you'll never end up with a visibly bad cut.

rangibaby2• 9 years ago

Wow! Thanks for that link. It matches with my experience over the years. I think choosing in-gamut colors to start is a good practice though. It saves frustration later on.

Otherwise agreed on all points. Nice post!

ptrptr• 9 years ago

Let's put it that way - Patrick Bateman would not be impressed by this design, otherwise commandable effort!

graycat12• 9 years ago

I've done all my business cards in TeX, just Plain TeX, not LaTeX, for years.

It's just a simple TeX exercise.

I have the spacing so that the printing goes to some standard card stock for business cards with the positioning just right. Then bending the printed card stock results in a stack of business cards. Works great. Simple.

drivingmenuts• 9 years ago

So your business cards have fuzzy edges from the perforations?

That just screams amateur.

nnd• 9 years ago

People still use business cards?

candeira• 9 years ago

Vertical card layouts look cool, but they aren't very practical for people with longer names or surnames.

To me this design seems right if you're English or Chinese, but try using it with your Greek or Basque name, or with the Spanish tradition of double (maternal and paternal) surnames.

user59944613• 9 years ago

Business Tip: ALWAYS use a white background on a business card (or at least, leave one side empty full white).

People will write and take notes on the card. Can't take note on a dark background.

deerpig• 9 years ago

I completely agree and would add that your name, telephone number and email address should be a large enough font that people don't have to take out their reading glasses or squint to read it.

FlorianRappl• 9 years ago

Can't agree more! I see a lot of bad business cards which do not leave one side empty full white.

forrestthewoods• 9 years ago

I have an iPhone. How do I scan a QR code? There's not a built in reader that I know of?

rongway• 9 years ago

Challenge - do the card in Asymptote

bcarlton02• 9 years ago

Mine is a PCB (Printed Circuit Board). I designed it with KiCAD. Open source CC-BY-NC-SA.https://github.com/bdc0/businesscard

err4nt• 9 years ago

I took graphic design in school (so I've seen plenty of business card concepts) and I just wanted to say that's the most creative card I've seen in years! I'd cherish something like that if you gave it to me - no matter how much they cost the impact is definitely worth it. Wow!

bcarlton02• 9 years ago

You aren't the only one who likes it; it definitely gets noticed. They cost ~$1 (US) in quantity.

The most common question I get is "If I install the chips, what do I get?" Unfortunately, the answer is nothing. There are people who have done that.

janci• 9 years ago

What an horrific idea to make an accidental horizontal swipe on a mobile device make the page jump to the top!

preek• 9 years ago

Horizontal swiping on my iPhone does what it's usually doing.

fhars2• 9 years ago

For me it even jumped to the top if I was not extremely careful and conscious when scrolling vertically, never even made it to the end of the description of the front side before giving up in desperation.

letientai299• 9 years ago

Off topic. Recently I have rebuilt my CV in LaTeX and I want to share it with you here:

https://github.com/letientai299/cv

pmoriarty4• 9 years ago

My favorite business card belongs to Kevin Mitnick.[1]

Can LaTeX do that?

[1] http://i.imgur.com/NxCZ32J.jpg

klaudioz• 9 years ago

I have a problem trying to generate the document with: xelatex src/front.tex

It is generated but without icons. If I see the file front.log I think it's trying to write the icons using Fira Sans:

  Missing character: There is no  in font Fira Sans/OT:script=latn;language=DFLT;mapping=tex-text;!

(The line shows 9 times and there are 9 icons too)

I tried everything but I have never used before Latex, so it's really complicated. Any comment will be very welcome.

Thanks.

apricot2• 9 years ago

Once I wrote a ten-line TeX program to add serial numbers to a large stack of Scantron forms. It worked well enough, but that's when I learned that laser printers are much less precise than I thought when it comes to positioning relative to the edges of the paper.

Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

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