Tue 3 Oct 2006

MOO Mini-cards

Just got back from the post-office to pick up a parcel I had forgotten about. After a Flickr blog entry a couple of weeks ago about a new printing service, I immediately gave in and bought some of those pretty looking cards. Today they arrived.

The price wasn't too bad and I wanted something that wasn't really a business card, but had my somewhat tricky to spell name and email address for conferences, etc. So I bought a box of 100. The results are not too shabby. Well done, MOO.

For anybody else thinking of ordering these, a couple of things worth mentioning:

• They really are mini cards. About half the height of a business card and almost as wide.
• The stock is very solid, so they won't crumple. I suspect they will bend easily and won't unbend without a crease, though.
• Printing like this always washes out colour a little bit, so choose bright, contrasting photos. I didn't think about this as much as I should have, so a lot of my grey and dark green outdoor shots don't look fantastic from a distance. Not ruined, or anything, but it brings home that I need to take more colourful daylight shots.
• The aspect ratio of the cards means it is a challenge to fit an interesting subject in sometimes. In the feedback after purchase, I asked for an option to shrink photos slightly to fit (you can increase the magnication, but not shrink it).
• The printing on the back is very clear and neat. I liked that I had a choice of colors and fonts, although it was a fairly easy choice to make in my case.
• I can't take photos to save my life. Have a look at the MOO Flickr pool to see what real photographers are doing with these.

All in all, worth it and nice to have these around. Possibly too small to be truly useful as cards, but I can throw them around with abandon at my friends without feeling like I'm tearing up money.

Topics: photography/flickr