Business Tip: ALWAYS use a white background on a business card (or at least, leave one side empty full white).
People will write and take notes on the card. Can't take note on a dark background.
Designing a Business Card in LaTeX
101–110 of 223 posts
Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this need not be the case. When creating this, I wanted it to look good and the way I wanted it. Not make it scream "LaTeX". For a CV, Computer Modern might be more apt since there's also more text on it. But again, why make it scream LaTeX if one can do it more subtle and make it more personal at the same time? Do note that I have a LaTeX PDF style CV as well, but it's not linked in the article (nor availabl…
> why make it scream LaTeX if one can do it more subtle and make it more personal at the same time? Because the point of a business card is to effectively signal your impressiveness.
Is LaTeX actually impressive to the average business client (i.e. someone without technical knowledge)?
Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX
#103Business Tip: ALWAYS use a white background on a business card (or at least, leave one side empty full white). People will write and take notes on the card. Can't take note on a dark background.
I completely agree and would add that your name, telephone number and email address should be a large enough font that people don't have to take out their reading glasses or squint to read it.
Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hell, even in academia people hate it =\
I'm not sure why you were downvoted. Most of the academics I know hate it. They use it because certain journals require it, or their advisor makes them use it.
I use TeX. LaTeX also works, but the books are longer and less well written than Knuth's original TeXBook! :-)!
I love TeX -- it's one of my favorite and most important tools.
I have a Ph.D. in applied math, and IMHO TeX (or LaTeX) is just essential, call that more than ESSENTIAL for my work.
E.g., now I'm a "solo founder" of a startup, a Web site. The crucial core of the work is some original applied math I derived. So, yup, i typed it into TeX. So, as I wrote the corresponding software, I referred back to the TeX output of my core math -- worked great!
Without the math, the software would be impossible; one would just look at the screen and wonder what the heck to type. With the math, the software was just routine, essentially just trivial.
For typing material with a lot of math, I see no reasonable alternative to TeX or LaTeX.
I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation with word processing (thankfully!) but without TeX. What a pain. I could have included more math in the dissertation if I'd had TeX to do the word whacking. More generally, at one point in my career, I could easily have written and published a lot of original and tutorial applied math but didn't because of the difficulty of the math word whacking before TeX.
The last paper I published, some a bit wild mathematical statistics, was a good test for TeX -- some of my mathematical expressions in subscripts were a bit much, but TeX worked flawlessly!
If anyone is typing a lot of mathematical material and objects to TeX, then just encourage them to do the typing without TeX and see if they like that world better!
Computing is changing the world in major ways, some just astounding and/or astoundingly good; math is helping, a lot now and will more in the future; and TeX is just crucial for getting the math word whacking done. But Knuth knew that and did a great job.
So far, for the near and distant future of computing, TeX is one of the stronger pillars of civilization.
Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX
#105Has anyone ever used QR codes on the business cards or store doors? It seems like a waste of space, you need to have a special app on your phone to read it. I think most people don't use that.
Right; I mean, I guess I could scan it to find out - but what is it, a link to OP's website? What could it possibly be that's easier to convey through a QR code - especially given that it's on a bit of paper you can keep.
I usually put a vcard on them rather than a link (especially on business cards) then you don't have type things into your phone.
Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Computer Modern is a hideous font. It's particularly terrible when rendered in Postscript/PDF, which is how almost all documents produced with it actually get read. But the +10 credibility is absolutely true. It's like CS grunge style: when you wear ugly clothes, you look more authentic.
How is Computer Modern much worse than, say, Times New Roman?
Times New Roman often means that you created the document with an old version of Microsoft Word (before Calibri became the default) and never bothered to customize anything.
Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX
#107If you're going to go through all the trouble of typesetting a business card in LaTeX, you really ought to use Computer Modern Roman so that folks know you typeset it in LaTeX. (Related; resumes in CMR always have +10 credibility.)
Computer Modern is now one of the most overused typefaces on the planet. It looks great for that “Victorian-era American-style math paper” look. People should mostly avoid it otherwise, IMO. There are plenty of better alternatives for typesetting pretty mathematics. * * * More generally about the thread here, TeX is not a productive or effective tool for making business cards or other heavily graphical documents. The…
On the one hand, I tend to agree with you. I used LaTeX (with beamer) to make several slideshows over the past few years, and it seems safe to say that this is not the exactly the kind of thing that plays to TeX's strengths.
On the other hand, there exist wizards who do things like this:
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/134638/showcase-tex-...
(check out the pink one with hearts; note that it uses random numbers so it doesn't even come out the same way each time, try doing that with anything but TeX (just don't ask why you'd want to); there's also one other that also used random numbers)
Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX
#108Has anyone ever used QR codes on the business cards or store doors? It seems like a waste of space, you need to have a special app on your phone to read it. I think most people don't use that.
I've actually-used QR codes once or twice, in the last... six years. I still have software that'll scan them installed, but just because Scanbot coincidentally does it as a side-effect of what I actually use it for.
That said, the use on this card of encoding a complete vCard is actually pretty decent. It's not a tiny URL which you could enter in a few seconds.
Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX
#109Has anyone ever used QR codes on the business cards or store doors? It seems like a waste of space, you need to have a special app on your phone to read it. I think most people don't use that.
Right; I mean, I guess I could scan it to find out - but what is it, a link to OP's website? What could it possibly be that's easier to convey through a QR code - especially given that it's on a bit of paper you can keep.
It's a complete vCard. So if you scan it, you get an "add to your contacts?" prompt.
Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why you were downvoted. Most of the academics I know hate it. They use it because certain journals require it, or their advisor makes them use it.
I use TeX. LaTeX also works, but the books are longer and less well written than Knuth's original TeXBook ! :-)! I love TeX -- it's one of my favorite and most important tools. I have a Ph.D. in applied math, and IMHO TeX (or LaTeX) is just essential, call that more than ESSENTIAL for my work. E.g., now I'm a "solo founder" of a startup, a Web site. The crucial core of the work is some original applied math I derived…
I'm pretty sure the overlap of academics who hate TeX and academics who comment on HN is small.