If you are in business, you probably have a business card. For an architect, this is just another opportunity to flex their creative muscles and design something amazing. Everything will be alright as long as you don't do these things ...

Is there a Blueprint background on your business card"StupidWhat if you made your card out of a slice of hardwood"StupidMaybe your card folds into a pop-up house"Super stupidOr maybe your business card is an unusual size"I might want to kill you.Just like every other article I’ve written for Life of an Architect, the idea for today’s post was born out of the moment I found myself at the paper cutter chopping down a few cards I had received during my trip to the National AIA convention in Orlando. It’s pretty typical that I come back from these sorts of events with a few dozen business cards – a menagerie of contact information from other architects, product vendors, and media connections. Some of these I want, other’s not so much, but they all go into the same pile on my desk until I make the time to sort through them and decide which ones I’m keeping and which ones are going to find themselves in my waste bin.This is Bob’s Big Book of Business Cards, something that has been in the making for almost 20 years. At current count, I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,100 cards, most of which I’ll never look at again once they make it into “the book”. If your...