January 30th, 2012
Just recently we needed to get a new batch of business cards printed; we were down to our last 20-odd and had lots of exciting events coming up.
Time for a rethink on what we wanted our new business cards to achieve.
Now I get handed all manner of business cards. Most are pretty standard, some are eye-catching and well thought out, while some hope to catch the receivers attention by being small or minimalist.
Is being small some sort of attempt at being green? Then why have a card at all!
At the forefront of what I wanted to achieve, was to set up an example that was easy to replicate, without having to create intricate 3D animations, alpha-channelled 3D videos or elsewise time-consuming, potentially expensive media.
OK, so back to our needs.
I, like so many of you, have many online media channels and lines of communication pointing toward me and Media Grand, yet they’re somehow disjoined. Bringing them all together was top of the list.
We have a number of key services based around augmenting print – brochures, posters, etc., so augmenting a business card also made sense for demonstrative purposes.
I’d seen a few examples of AR enhanced business cards over the past year or so, and had already started to come up with a few ideas of my own.
Armed with some fundamental requirements we drew up some designs for the new card.
All we wanted to show on the card was the minimum contact information. Any other online channels and traditional lines of communication were to be pulled together into one place for the AR experience.
Our online channels are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and some YouTube videos. We also have our website and blog. This was a good place to start.
Now add email, phone number, contact form and map and you’ve suddenly got a lot of information to make contacting us as easy as possible.
We chose to use the Layar Reality Browser to launch our AR business card, as it’s cross-platform, flexible and allows for quick updates across the board.
Our initial card designs were done, but the way image recognition works in Layar meant we had to make a few tweaks to the final design. We beefed up the contrast, added some additional detail and finally achieved a design that worked 100% of the time in Layar Vision.
The next step was to design the augments; the digital buttons that link the card to the content.
For this we went with simple, recognisable icons. We aimed for a semi-transparent panel effect to replicate glass touch-screens.
We put the digital artwork into the system and wired everything up (virtually of course).
All our hard work has already paid off, as everyone who has seen it so far, loves it. I couldn’t be happier.
If you like what we’ve done with our business card, go to our Facebook page and join us so we can keep you updated with our AR news.
Tagged with: AR Print • Business Card • Facebook • Google Maps • LinkedIn • Twitter
Categories: Augmented Reality • Layar • Layar Vision • News • Projects