A Few months ago I signed up for a buisness card exchange, or #bizx, hosted by @meredithmarsh, and I submitted my business cards, designed and produced by Jamie Hoyt-Vitale, a good friend of mine. I wrapped them as carefully as I could, 4 stacks of 32 or 33 cards, the stacks individually wrapped with paper, then wrapped with a layer of cardboard and taped up, and placed into a padded envelope so the corners wouldn’t get messed up in shipment. I think I may have over padded it but hey, better safe than sorry right?

I received the package in the mail today and put off making dinner to go through the cards. I’ve always LOVED business cards and have collected ones that I thought were designed well, so I was really excited to be able to finally have them in my hands!

They came in an envelope that fit perfectly in my apartment’s mailbox:

4 stacks of cards rubber banded together, 2 of the stacks were the leftovers from those who decided they had more important things to do..

Still, it was a lot of cards, and I laid them all across the table (please forgive the messiness of the table, I had to push everything aside for enough space!)

I noticed that a lot of people went with rounded corners:

Small and differently sized business cards were also pretty popular:

I gotta say, huge text is one of my favs:

Lastly, there were a lot of spot UV coated cards, but my camera wouldn’t capture them too well..

My favorite card design of all of the cards submitted is Cathy Olson’s card for Love at First Invite.

All in all, there were a lot of nice cards! Nice work everyone!

I took some video and put together a 15 second clip:

bizx from doitJEFFSTYLE on Vimeo.

Thanks, Meredith, for putting this all together, it was a really interesting experience!

edit:
@thedesigner4you has put together a list of almost all of the #bizx participants on twitter, check em out! You can also check out her blog post.

Here’s a few more posts by #bizx participants, Steven Trotter, Branden Silva, Artiatesia Deal, and Niki Brown.

It’s been a while (in fact, it’s been several months..) since I last posted and declared my urge to become a more active blogger. As much as I really want to blog more regularly, I’m finding that free time is hard to come by these days! However, I have been keeping up with my RSS feeds and bookmarking those that I think I’ll go back to. To get my blogging back on track and to start things off, I’ve compiled a list of inspirational and helpful WordPress sources. I hope the links in this post are useful to you!

Inspiration: Wordpress Design/Usage

• 30 Untypical WordPress Sites | Web Designer Wall
• 25 Unique uses of WordPress as CMS | Noupe
• 11 Non-Traditional Uses of WordPress | Design M.ag
• Tag Clouds Gallery: Examples And Good Practices | Smashing Magazine
• WordPress Gallery | We Love WP
• Showcasing the Best WordPress Sites on the Internet | WPInspiration

Resources: Wordpress Themes

• 100 Amazing Free Wordpress Themes for 2009 | Smashing Magazine
• The 50 Best Premium WordPress Themes | Design Reviver
• Download “Gallery”: A Free WordPress Theme | Smashing Magazine
• 40 Stylish, Minimal and Clean Free Wordpress Themes | Speckyboy
• The Top 7 Quality Free WordPress Themes Released in February 2009 | 2experts Design
• 140+ Brilliant Free Wordpress Themes Around | instantShift
• Free Theme: Magazeen. Style & Functionality in one Theme, now on Smashing Magazine | Function
• 15 High Quality Free Premium WordPress 2.7 Themes | Noupe
• 100 Beautiful Free Wordpress Themes | Back to Essentials

Resources: Wordpress Plugins

• 13 Beneficial Wordpress Plugins For Your Design Blog | The Design Cubicle
• 10 WordPress Plugins for New Blogs | ProBlogger
• 12 Wordpress Plugins to Display and Highlight Code within your Blog | Speckyboy
• 10 Wordpress Plugins We Cannot Live Without | Harkins Creative
• The Power of WordPress and jQuery: 25+ Useful Plugins & Tutorials | Noupe
• 25 Great WordPress Plugins! | TechZoomIn
• 24 plugins that I currently use on my blog and why you should use them too | HowToMakeMyBlog
• 17 Really Useful Wordpress Plugins That Probably Are Essential | SmashingApps
• Top 5 Twitter plugins to incorporate into your blog | HowToMakeMyBlog
• Top 18 most downloaded WordPress plugins ever | HowToMakeMyBlog

Tutorials, Wordpress Hacks, Code Snippets, and Techniques

• Custom Fields Hacks For WordPress | Smashing Magazine
• Quick and Easy Code Snippets for Wordpress | Arbenting
• 101 Techniques for a Powerful CMS using WordPress | Noupe
• 10 Exceptional WordPress Hacks | Smashing Magazine
• 10 awesome .htaccess hacks for WordPress | Cats Who Code
• Top 50 Wordpress Tutorials | Nettuts+
• 15 Useful Wordpress Tricks to Make Your Theme Even Better | For the Lose
• 20 WordPress Tricks to Improve Your Blog | Design M.ag
• Numbering your comments, pingbacks, trackbacks or all | WP Engineer
• Make the Move from FeedBurner to Google | Pro Blog Design
• Create a Custom WordPress Plugin From Scratch | Nettuts+
• My Wordpress Cheat Sheet | Graphic Rating
• Info: How to Style Nested Comments in WP 2.7 | Blog Perfume
• Building Custom WordPress Theme | Web Designer Wall
• Add Widget-ready Sidebars to Wordpress Footers | Blogging Sueblimely
• How to: Style author comments in WordPress 2.7 | Wp Recipes
• Secretly “Test Drive” a WordPress Theme | WebDazzling
• 10 Killer WordPress Hacks | WebDazzling

Tips

• The Ultimate WordPress Guide For The Absolute Beginner Part 1 | Elite By Design
• 9 settings I always adjust as soon as I install a new WordPress blog | HowToMakeMyBlog
• 10 Things to do After Installing Wordpress | Pro Blog Design
• 13 Tips for Working with WordPress on Client Sites | Design M.ag
• 13 Great WordPress Speed Tips & Tricks for MAX Performance | Noupe
• 10 Steps To Protect The Admin Area In WordPress | Smashing Magazine
• Wordpress Security Tips | Lost In Search

Other Posts to Check Out

• WORDPRESS GOD: 300+ Tools for Running Your WordPress Blog | Mashable

I’d love to hear from you! Please feel free to leave me a message below if you have any questions, comments, or any other links to add to my list. Look out for other posts from me in the future by subscribing to my RSS feed, and make sure you follow me on Twitter for my latest finds!

A few weeks ago I had been surfing the net and found an inspirational drawing that was just drawn in a moleskine notebook ~ it was then that I impulsively ordered some moleskine sketchbooks off ebay (for cheap!) in hopes of finding new ways to being creative and inspiring myself. I received them in about a week but I’ve been busy working on new media team project stuff and enjoying this rare sunny Rochester weather, so I haven’t opened them or looked at the stack of moleskines sitting on the corner of my desk. This morning, while surfing WeHeartIt, I came upon Mike Rohde’s sketchnotes(pictured above) from the SXSWi 2008 conference. I found them really inspirational, so I think I’m going to start keeping some sketchnotes, and I’ll probably have a moleskine in hand while at FITC! We’ll see how my sketchnotes come out! If you’re reading this post, Mike, thanks for scanning & uploading your sketchnotes, and inspiring me!