Hasta La Creative!

Are you tired of plain old traditional self-promotion? Business cards? What is this, the 1980s?

No, clearly this is the 1990s, and you need to log on to your personal computer right now and design your very own Business Pogs!

Remember pogs? Basically, they were little cardboard circles with pictures on them that were a fad in the early ’90s, lasting about as long as the Funky Bunch before Marky Mark married Mark Wahlberg.

With this service (the amazingly retro video below and associated website actually date back to 2012…how are we just discovering these treasures?) you can get all kinds of cool designs on them: 8 balls, yin yangs, cobras, skulls! And your very own name, phone number and electronic mail address!

What’s that? You want to “go viral with QR codes”? Well you’ve found your place. 

This seems legit too, but the minimum order is $100.

So, if the GIFs above weren’t enough, take a look below at the full video, in all of its faux ’90s glory. As of press time, the folks at Business Pogs could not be reached for comment. We’ll try again in a year or two. 

I have a pile of business cards on a tray in my office, and I'd be hard pressed to remember where I met the people whose names are on those cards if it weren't for some hastily scratched notes in the white space. ("Start-up owner, kept joking about Mad Men, didn't catch my Tupac reference.")

It's generally hard to make an impression on a piece of cardstock that's 3.5 by 2 inches, but German agency Jung von Matt definitely found a winner with its incredible business card for jewelry company Marrying—which, as the name suggests, specializes in engagement rings and wedding bands.

The card rolls up, becoming a handy tool to measure one's ring size. The idea is that men who are shopping for a ring can use the card at home to subtly check the size of a woman's current rings, saving them the rather obvious reveal of saying: "Hey baby, what's your ring size? What? No reason."

The agency effectively married (sorry) utility with good advertising, and I like it.

Via Design Taxi.

Business cards already seem pretty retro in the world of modern networking, but here's one that manages to be both cutting-edge and vintage at the same time.

Portland-based photographer Kevin Bates made a business card for himself that is also a playable Tetris game. Bates calls his creation the Arduboy, since it's a Game Boy clone built on a stripped-down Arduino board that only has room for the essentials: a four-direction digital control pad, two buttons and a tiny OLED screen.

It's not exactly something you can order in bulk from Vistaprint, what with all the soldering involved, so I don't think Bates will be passing these out at cocktail parties anytime soon. With a Kickstarter campaign in the works, Bates says his goal is to sell similar cards for $30 each, with a hand-designed version for $50 and a custom-skinned model for $100. He says he's also looking for a manufacturer to produce them in bulk to reduce the price even further.

He says he'll release the Arduboy's plans and source code publicly at some point though, which is just as good, and this project should kick up more business for him than traditional networking ever would anyway.