Card Observer is a design inspiration gallery that does only one thing but it does it extremely well: Collect the best business cards from around the web and display them in all their glory to help inspire your next great business card design.
The site itself has a very clean look and feel to it, and the photography is definitely top notch. Each card features a full size image, and a word or two about the design from the designers themselves.
If you’re tired of just showing off your name and phone number when handing out your business cards, then take a look through Card Observer and see what strikes your fancy, because I bet you can get an idea or two from just a brief look around at what’s on display.
[Card Observer]
[Via: Vandelay Design]
Make casual Fridays even more casual with “The Tie” from Anton Repponen.
Sadly, it’s just a concept illustration for now, but hopefully with a little promotion from the blog world, he’ll find a company that’s interested in producing his fantastic idea.
[Anton Repponen]
[Via: Book Of Joe]
This year, gift cards go beyond just plastic as companies add features to lure you into buying the profit-filled gifts.
New card ideas include Target, which has added a small digital camera to their card, and Best Buy, which chose to go with a speaker that can connect to any MP3 player and play music through the included mini headphone jack.
While the Target card makes sense, because you can use it to capture holiday memories, send thank you pics to the gift giver, and even use it as a camera stand-in on your way to buying a real digital camera of your choice, the Best Buy one seems a little strange, since I can’t imagine the tiny speaker sounding any good as it attempts to keep up with the enthusiastic gift recipient.
Either way though, it’s an interesting idea, and it will be interesting to see what gets attached to a gift card next.
[Target Gift Card, Best Buy Gift Card]
Considering last week’s Iranian missile story, I though that Henry Hadlow’s Tell A Lie project was rather fitting:
The most controversial lies told with photography today are those told by news photographers who manipulate their work photographs to tell a different story, for example, Liu Weiqiang’s faked photograph of antelope and the China-Tibet rail link.
He also ads that he wanted to “flip this lie on its head and use a camera to mimic common Photoshop effects”.
Along those same lines, I thought that Fubiz’s Google Images idea was another fantastic way to take a photo with a digital spin that gives it a simple yet fun effect:
[Henry Hadlow - Tell A Lie]
[Fubiz - Google Images]
