Pick A Card, Any Card

It's about time! A full four months or so after I settled on a design for a business card, I finally went to the print shop this week and had some printed up. Hey, what can I say, I'm busy.

They turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. The paper's a bit thinner than I expected, as shown by the slight curve on each one, but that's my fault for not checking the thickness of the stock beforehand. All in all I'm pretty happy with them.

Here's a better view of the card.

I almost made a horrible mistake at the print shop. I gave them a pdf file with 25 cards laid out on a 12" x 18" page. I asked them how much it would be to print one 12x18 sheet of paper. They said it varied by the quantity, but $1.30 each was a good ballpark figure. I said that sounded fine and told them I wanted 500.

While the print lady disappeared into the back, I got out my phone and used the calculator to multiply $1.30 by 500. I gasped when that turned out to be $650!!! Yikes! I realized that I hadn't made myself very clear-- I wanted 500 business cards, not 500 12x18 sheets!!! Because I'd given them a file with 25 cards per sheet, I only needed 20 sheets, for a total of $26.

I immediately told her of the mistake, and made sure she understood exactly what I wanted. That would have been a disaster if I'd gone back to the shop and had been presented with a bill for $650 for 12,500 cards!