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Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

olivierpieters.be

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Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#111

Post by pavlov »

marvy wrote: post #98
pavlov wrote: post #66

Earlier 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?

Computer Modern has a very high contrast of thick and thin strokes, and the axis of the strokes is completely vertical. This makes it very difficult to render on bitmap displays: you can end up with 3-pixel lines next to 1-pixel lines, and the optical compensations of antialiasing can't fix the visual appearance because most of the lines are orthogonal.

These characteristics of the font are intentional: it's really a showcase for Knuth's Metafont system which lets you tweak stroke contrast to a high level, so you can create many weight and casing variations of Computer Modern parametrically. And it does look bearable in print. But it's really the worst possible screen font.

Times is much better in this respect because it was designed for readability long before computers, for newspaper printing where unexpected ink bleed and other artifacts were daily routine.

(Cynically, it's possible to view Computer Modern as a fitting portrait of computer science itself: the font is used because it's exciting to have 62 tweakable parameters in a system designed by someone famous in the field, not because it's any good for the end users.)

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#112

Post by wycx »

aw3c2 wrote: post #80
jilljennV wrote: post #27

In March 2014, I attended a conference in Atlanta. In the subway, some nice guy told me I had to make business cards for the conference. So I went to some kinko and asked: - How much for 250 business cards? - $69. - If I provide a PDF and just ask you to print and cut, can you do it for today? - Yes. - How much? - $39. Do you have the file? - Yes. It was a lie. I opened a new LaTeX document and typed this thing, than…

I don't quite get why LaTeX is special here. You could have done the same in Inkscape, Word or whatever other text stuff related program.

Even better, you could layout with Inkscape AND typeset the text with LaTeX using textext: https://bitbucket.org/pitgarbe/textext

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#113

Post by gumby »

cderwin wrote: post #102
jessriedel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)?

It's like a secret handshake.

This comment could sound sarcastic but it's not. Even that marketing manager could be a nerd, and it would be awesome to find out.

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#114

Post by zeamaize »

opieters wrote: post #33
NelsonMinar wrote: post #28

If 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.)

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…

Then why do it in TeX as opposed to Inkscape?

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#115

Post by drivingmenuts »

graycat wrote: post #68

I've done all my business cards in TeX, just Plain TeX, not LaTeX, for years. It's just a simple TeX exercise. I have the spacing so that the printing goes to some standard card stock for business cards with the positioning just right. Then bending the printed card stock results in a stack of business cards. Works great. Simple.

So your business cards have fuzzy edges from the perforations?

That just screams amateur.

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#116

Post by jasonm23 »

jakobegger wrote: post #20

These are really beautiful business cards. But man, does anybody actually get value out of their business cards? No interesting opportunity has ever come up for me as a result of sharing business cards. At some point I stopped taking them with me. I still have a bunch of them in my desk drawer, they're very outdated, and I only use them for grocery lists. Is that just me, or are business cards going out of fashion in…

Really interesting business cards, simply cannot look like a business card, and the direct communication features (contact details) are secondary.

If a business card can delight people who receive it, then it has a point.

In this epoch, if sharing contact details requires a hardcopy, I'm of the opinion that it's of very limited value. Although it's useful to have business cards for many locales, since they are a customary item. (In many parts of Asia, it's essential)

So, if a card can communicate some meta information (sense of creativity, problem solving, good humor etc.) That's going to have value. It will create an interesting memory.

I think it's worth having a few designs made, but it's a matter of ROI.

If you think you need a business card, think about why, where and who they are for.

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#117

Post by wtbob »

gumby wrote: post #113
cderwin wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is LaTeX actually impressive to the average business client (i.e. someone without technical knowledge)?

It's like a secret handshake. This comment could sound sarcastic but it's not. Even that marketing manager could be a nerd, and it would be awesome to find out.

FWIW, my $BOSS-2 had a PhD, loved LaTeX and even set one of our lower-level guys on writing all our company-internal docs in LaTeX. It actually worked out pretty well.

I imagine that an obviously-LaTeX resume (look for the ligatures, the correct spacing between sentences vice after periods, the clean, consistent grey across the page, the bold, clean margins) would play especially well with him. As you might guess from the preceding sentence, it'd probably play pretty well with me, too!

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#118

Post by wtbob »

usaphp wrote: post #30

Has 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.

One of the first apps I install on my phone is ZXing's Barcode Scanner, specifically so I can scan QR codes. On Android, it's hands-down the easiest way to post WiFi details for a LAN party or similar (no idea how to do it with iPhones — maybe Apple sells some $99 AirWiFiScanner thing?).

I'll scan 'em to see if there's useful info there. I'm a little concerned that there may be some way to do something malicious with a QR code, but I don't believe I've ever seen a POC.

I'll also use them to set up TOTP. Incredibly easy.

Honestly, I wish that they were used more often. In my experience they work flawlessly.

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#119

Post by wtbob »

user5994461 wrote: post #97
joemi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an iOS user, I always assumed QR code reading was just built into Android's camera app. Is that not so?

Nope. Can't read QR code an android out of the box. You need to get 1 out of 100 applications from the app store, that competes for the one who can shows the most ads and be the least effective at decoding the picture. Are you saying that the iPhone camera can read QR code out of the box?

> You need to get 1 out of 100 applications from the app store, that competes for the one who can shows the most ads and be the least effective at decoding the picture.

The ZXing Barcode Scanner doesn't show any ads. IIRC, they give it away for free because they want people to use their (open source, natch) barcode library. I've been very happy with it.

This of course demonstrates a problem with the App Store model: neither Google nor Apple has a strong incentive or interest in directing users to the best, most secure, most privacy-preserving apps (particularly Google, who would prefer that privacy become a thing of the past): they would much rather that you buy something, or use some ad-ridden piece of nearly malware.

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#120

Post by maverick_iceman »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #62
IshKebab wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I always install CMR in MS Word. Handy link (because it's actually quite hard to find): http://concentriclivers.appspot.com/LatinModernTTFHinted.7z

Word kerning and hyphenation still sucks, so -10. Seriously, there are many places (CS publishing) where there are biases against papers written in Word.

Very true. I'm unlikely to take an arXiv article seriously if it hasn't been typeset in LaTeX.
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