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Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

olivierpieters.be

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Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#181

Post by Normal_gaussian »

joemi wrote: post #77
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.

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

Kind of.

Google Now has QR code reading built in, if you have a QR code on the screen (e.g through a camera app) you can have google now scan the screen by holding the home button.

I don't remember having to enable it, but if it isn't enabled for android users you can go into Google Now settings and enable "Screen Search".

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#182

Post by Normal_gaussian »

mastax wrote: post #89
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?

(from memory, may be out of date) The AOSP camera app does not support QR code reading, and neither does Google's camera app. Many Android phones will have one or both of these installed. Most phones also come with a manufacturer-specific camera app. I know new-ish Motorola phones will read QR codes, and I suspect that the "kitchen sink" vendors like Samsung would as well.

It is kind of indirect, Google Now Screen Search supports QR Codes, so if you have a way to get the code onto your screen (via the camera app viewfinder for example) you can read it.

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#184

Post by whorleater »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #84
Cyph0n wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely not the case in computer science and electrical engineering at least. LaTeX definitely isn't great, but I don't see a viable alternative.

There's always InDesign, but given its time to proficiency, I think the bast case for similar purposes might still be something creating LaTeX/DocBooks source that ports well to InDesign.

Can't diff a indesign file, whereas latex is easy to diff.

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#185

Post by FabHK »

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…

As other poster said, business cards are important in Asia (not only Japan). Hand it over and receive it with two hands, inspect it carefully, hold it or leave it on the table for a while (don't just stuff it away immediately).

Having said that, I have for a while now used a dedicated email address for business cards to track its effectiveness, and extremely rarely receive anything on there.

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#186

Post by FabHK »

nextos wrote: post #59
opieters wrote: post #33

Earlier 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…

Exactly. Good TeX should simply yield to good typography. Nice ligations, etc. I dont like Computer Modern too much. I am very fond of Gentium [1]. For math, I love Euler [2], which is used in Concrete Mathematics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentium [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMS_Euler

BTW, I assumed you meant "ligatures" (for joined letters)? (Not sure what "ligations" are - maybe autocorrect... :-)

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#187

Post by FabHK »

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)?

Good point, I fear it could backfire in a business setting. Mind you, I'm a huge LaTeX fan, but the one study I'm aware of that compared the efficiency of Word and LaTeX for a couple of average writing tasks came to a pretty damning conclusion (see quote below). So, I'd argue that LaTeX is the right tool for long math-heavy texts under version control, while better tools exist for most other tasks.

> LaTeX users were slower than Word users, wrote less text in the same amount of time, and produced more typesetting, orthographical, grammatical, and formatting errors. On most measures, expert LaTeX users performed even worse than novice Word users.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#188

Post by FabHK »

jacobolus wrote: post #72
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.)

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…

> TeX is not a productive or effective tool for making business cards or other heavily graphical documents.

Agreed. See the study "An Efficiency Comparison of Document Preparation Systems Used in Academic Research and Development" which concludes

"LaTeX users were slower than Word users, wrote less text in the same amount of time, and produced more typesetting, orthographical, grammatical, and formatting errors. On most measures, expert LaTeX users performed even worse than novice Word users."

The study does claim though that LaTeX users had more fun while doing worse work, so there's that... :-)

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#189

Post by haddr »

yellowapple wrote: post #154
jacobolus wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You managed to name a bunch of typefaces which are even less suitable for tasks where someone might use Computer Modern (Times is comparable). I’m not sure what that proves.... Instead of Calibri, the Microsoft-provided typeface to use for mathematics is Cambria, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambria_(typeface)#Cambria_Mat... Personally I like Minion, http://www.typoma.com/en/fonts.html Or combining some kind of Rena…

My comment was in response to the assertion that CM is somehow "overused". Compared to the fonts I listed, Computer Modern is pretty obscure. Maybe I just wasn't clear enough on that part, in which case I sincerely apologize for my poor communication skills.

Ok, I got this, but honestly i thought you meant the opposite

Re: Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

#190

Post by Jonovono »

saalaa wrote: post #183
Jonovono wrote: post #2

Nice! I recently re-did my business cards. Pretty happy with how they came out: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C25LX0bXAAAWWYL.jpg:large

Hey, what font did you use? One notable feature is that the @ is very circular which is quite rare with fixed fonts.

It's called Cutive Mono! Took awhile to settle on one :p
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