Vista Print Business Cards

Keyliner is now a repeat customer with Vistaprint. Three years ago, I logged in to their website, designed a business card, accepted the proof, and the order a few days later. 250 two-sided cards with graphics on both sides. They specialize in real offset printing with small production runs and fast turn-arounds. I was pleased.

With this batch, I wanted cards with Keyliner's new branding and I wanted a QR code ($0). As before, it is a blast designing cards. It took about an hour dinking around with graphics, fiddling with fonts and what-not - with most of this time playing.  

You should do this for no other reason than it is fun handing people a card.

It beats telling them your phone number or email address.

I wanted to correct three mistakes from the first batch of cards. Always order heavier card-stock, adding about $2. Secondly, I switched from matte to glossy paper, mostly because of the photograph ($0). Finally, a QR code seems like a good idea ($0). 

Compared to three years ago, the price is roughly the same: $35 (including shipping).  However, in early January, 2016, they had an online promo code "NewYear", which pops-up on the site -- bringing the price down to $24.  

(There almost always seems to be a promotion of some type or other, or there is free shipping.  I think this makes the real normal price for 250 front-side cards about $24 - $30, depending on paper stock, etc. Doubling the order to 500 cards is $3 more - makes sense because they already have the press running.) 

Here were the cards from 2012:

The only issue I had was at checkout. It is a full-court-press, offering everything from branded pens to tee-shirts, coffee mugs, magnets, websites, scratchpads, dogfood -- you get the idea.

The gauntlet is easy to navigate, but there are four or five screens to skip before you can complete the order. On the plus-side, it was interesting at how quickly the graphics were generated, all using my artwork. But my art did not include text (which was over-layed using the site's design tools) and this made for humorous product placements. I'm sure this is all fixable. For example, you can see my graphic wrapped around a pen.

Final opinion:
Fun. Easy-to-use. Reasonably priced. Quality product. Recommended.



Related article: 
Keyliner - Generate your own QR code (not needed, nor required by Vistaprint)