Laser Cut Business Cards...

This week was super busy. Got lots of stuff done, ending today with supporting the symposium I've been working on for the prof in Eugene. It went well. No hitches to speak of.

Yesterday, in prep, I went down to the school and laser cut some business cards. I've had this idea for a bit about taking mat board... about 1/8" thick with a colored paper surface, and then burning a business card into it. I'd done some experimenting already and found that you could burn a little bit into the colored paper and produce a nice grey tone, or deeper through the color to get a whitish yellow from the backing material, or all the way through the card to get a punched hole. When I went to get cards printed up for my final project presentation, I'd used a design of squares that I was told was hard to print on cards because they were difficult to line up accurately with the card cutter. They did fine with them, but of course with the laser cutter it wasn't even a problem since i was cutting the card outline at the same time as I was cutting the information into the face of the card.

What I had not realized was something totally serendipitous that happened when I did all this. I cut my designs and was driving home, talking on the cell phone and looking at the card (yes, while driving), when I discovered that I'd scribed some of the lines into the paper just deep enough that light behind the card shown through them, creating a beautiful highlighted pattern. Its really stunning.

So now I've got a new idea, what if I cut into the back of the card almost all the way through and the design shows up when you hold the card up to the light. I could even laminate a thin sheet of covering paper onto the back of the card to cover up the cutting that is there. You could either give out a card that looks completely blank until you hold it up to the light, or with just a single line of text that shows up normally and then a design that appears in front of the light. I think it would be ultra cool.

Anyhow, I gave a few away today. They only ref my website, which I also got started this week. It will take a few days to really come to life and you'll here about it first right here!

- Brian -