First of all, a disclaimer: its a 100% personal project which evolved from the idea the idea of how a medium of a business card can be challenged and appropriated according to a personality to whom it belongs. 

I'm yet to meet a client who would agree to try this approach, so I decided to step in and be both a client and a designer on this case. To be fair, I did pitch the idea to a couple of my clients but they chose to stick with something more conservative. Can't blame them, those projects weren't quite fitting for the idea thus I wasn't pushing clients too much (still need to work on my pitching skills, though). So, I stepped in as a client-designer duo in one, cleaned up my mind and followed the idea. 

Without spoiling anything, I was lucky enough to avoid the case of you-are-your-worst-client as I considered this project more of an experiment rather than an enterprise. As a result, I had fun making it and still pumped up to do more and see where it'll lead me!

The basic idea was to develop a system of elements (almost an identity) which would make a business card recognizable while having adaptive elements which could be altered according to the circumstances of giving away the card, a manner of conversation while networking or even creating a playful scenario and let a recipient choose a card him- or herself. Such a tiny ritual can be an effective tool in making a business card recognizable afterwards and also in placing a person with a card in recipients memory.

Also in this edition adaptive potential of the cards manifests itself in the use of colored paper, thus every card has a different mood. It is quite fun to observe people picking their version (and it also tells you a little something about a person:)

The card has two sides: informational and decorative, but here's a catch: the diagonal fold allows the card to be purely informational while having (hopefully) a recognizable shape and also teasing an inside pattern. And the pattern itself serves as a graphic contrast to a dry informational side, as if saying 'Fun in inside'.

Fascinating thing came up in the process: folded structure of business cards allows multiple curious combinations throughout the set and a number of pattern can be produced to create different moods. It comes particularly handy when you need to lay out the cards for people to take away and you can create various options for different occasions or environments. 

So, here it is, the first edition of my business cards. I attempted to make them as close to my personal view of what a business cards should be as possible, and I do like the result. I doesn't imply, however, that it it the best version there could be. Not even close, to be fair. I already have the ideas for the features I want to upgrade for the second edition. Furthermore, as I additionally wanted to achieve a slight degree of my self representation, be sure that the cards will be changing with me throughout my professional journey.

Moreover, the fact that this experiment inspires me to keep thinking of the ways to improve it I consider a success. Not the perfection itself, but a perfect step in the right direction.