small batch business cards

September 22, 2014 7:18 AM

I currently wear a bunch of different career hats, and I'd like to get small batches of three different kinds of business cards (say, 50 or so). Where/with what printing company can I do this inexpensively?

I am in downtown Toronto, btw. I'd like each to have some sort of colored graphic on one side, and contact info on the other.

posted by atetrachordofthree to Shopping (9 answers total)

Moo.com is pretty good.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 7:20 AM on September 22, 2014 [6 favorites]

Best answer: Pretty much any print shop (kinko's staples, etc) can cut card stock into precise business-card shapes, so it's just a matter of making a document that has your desired graphics and data. Double-sided color print on card-stock with cuts might be something like $2.50 per page of 10 cards.
posted by aimedwander at 7:38 AM on September 22, 2014

I've used vistaprint online to make cards and it's always worked out well and is cheap (although I'm not sure what the minimum number you can get is).
posted by PinkPoodle at 7:50 AM on September 22, 2014 [1 favorite]

Best answer: At such low quantities, your best bet is a place that will run them off on a digital press (basically an inkjet of massive steroids) like Kinkos or Staples or any number of independent print shops.

There's simply no profit at these low quantities for anyone to set-up an actual letterpress/offset press. It would take longer to set-up the press than the actual run would take.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:02 AM on September 22, 2014

Seconding Moo. I'm terrible at remembering to hand out cards, so I order from them in runs of 50. They are pretty and offer a lot of different design options. Most of their cards are formatted for "unlimited color image on one side, info on other side" type of designs.
posted by Sara C. at 8:23 AM on September 22, 2014

I use uprinting.com for my business cards. Great pricing. They go all the way to quantities of 25. They have good customer service too. We place orders through them at my job too.
posted by Crystalinne at 8:41 AM on September 22, 2014

I third moo. I know they seem a bit more expensive than some others, but the quality really shows. When I was running design for a small firm, we ordered some from Moo for the quick turnaround and then sent large orders to one of the cheaper places. The latter quality, both in printing and in paper quality was abysmal. Moo also has a number of templates to help non-designers make solid choices.
posted by dame at 11:15 AM on September 22, 2014

Check the prices at online services before going into Kinko's. Because of Kinko's speed and hands on approach, you might find that 100 from vistaprint is equivalent to 30 from kinko's.

Also, if you go to a print shop, ask to cut them yourselves. If you're only doing 30, the cutting would cost more than the printing. There are paper cutters in the store usually so you can get equivalent quality on your own.
posted by tofu_crouton at 11:48 AM on September 22, 2014

If you create an about.me profile they will give you 50 free MOO cards (all you have to do is pay for the shipping, it's $5.99 here in TX... ). Once you make your profile, you go to http://about.me/share/cards (it is somewhere under the share settings, but I find this link easier to follow).

I also wear a bunch of career hats and found the website useful as a link-to in my email signature to let my clients know about the other things I do. I have not used this free-business card service myself, but played around with it a little bit a few months ago.

The card will have the general design of your about.me page and include one of those annoying QR codes that link to the page BUT you can actually customize the card however you want on the MOO site. It's worth checking out at least :)
posted by Rage-chel at 2:12 PM on September 22, 2014