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Ever since I started selling online through Etsy (2008), I’ve made more online purchases in the past year than I have for all the years I’ve been on the Internet. Which isn’t saying much as I really don’t do much shopping online to start with. But with a Paypal account (a requisite to having an Etsy seller account), I might have to rethink that last statement.
I got this in the mail a few days ago.
It’s a test swatch of one of my designs printed on fabric by Spoonflower, a fabric-printing company in the US. I don’t do any stitching so I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to order fabric, but it’s fabric I designed so the $7 (including shipping) I spent for a small swatch of 8 x 8 square of fabric is justified, right? Right? The design turned out well, in my biased opinion. The person from Spoonflower who wrapped up my order must’ve thought so as well as he/she scribbled “Cute!” on the packaging. Now, what to do with that test swatch…
Another thing that arrived recently is a batch of 250 double-sided business cards I designed for a doctor who had just recently started his practice. When Dr. Daniel Diaz approached me to design his cards for him, he gave me full rein. Right away I knew I wanted to design something that wasn’t boring, cluttered with text (those clinic and appointment schedules!), and adorned with a caduceus, as most business cards for doctors are. I presented Dr. Diaz with some studies, my favorite being the one below:
I went for a simple approach, working primarily with clean, flat colors and layout (instead of graphics/images) as the design focus of the card. Dr. Diaz’s clients were mostly old people who will not care for big and bold screaming graphics and frankly, that doesn’t really go well with one in the medical profession.
Dr. Diaz liked my studies but his fellow doctors (whom he consulted for a second opinion– haha) thought they were too advertising industry-ish. “Doctors,” Dr. Diaz sighed. “They’re so boring.” In the end, we went with a much more simple design that really went back to the basics of what a business card is: a piece of card you hand out to people so they can contact you. This is what we ended up with:
Simple, basic, and will really stand out among the slew of caduceus-laden business cards a patient might have courtesy of other doctors. These were printed by overnightprints.com (I also used them for my own business cards), a service I highly recommend if only for the quality of their printing and their thick cardstock. Their delivery is kind of slow though, so only use them if you’re not against a time-sensitive deadline.
Dr. Diaz was thrilled over how his cards turned out. Hopefully this gets him more clients for his med practice! If you’re in Cebu city, feel free to contact him via the info in the above images for an appointment.
