Business Card Composer
September 29, 2004
By: Jonahan
Well, as many of you could probably guess, I've always been quite the slacker and haven't had much
of a need for a business card, but lately I've found that being able to give someone a compact,
rectangular piece of paper with my contact information on it would be really handy, whether it's
for my 'real' job or for 2 Guys stuff. Of course I never wanted to shell out the money to have
some business cards professionally done, and I figured there HAD to be a way to do it quickly and
easily on my Mac.
Along comes BeLight Software to the rescue!
Serendipitously, they asked us to review their Business Card Composer
and I jumped at the offer. So here's a review from someone who designed and printed their own
'bidness cards from scratch for the first time, in well under an hour.
First off, I had no idea what sort of paper to get, and BeLight Software's site
holds your hand and gives you tips on buying the right paper,
printer solutions, and heck
even clipart solutions. Armed with
this knowledge, I headed off to WalMart and picked up some matte, clean-edge business cards.
Then I came home and fired up Business Card Composer.
I have to say that this application is very well-written. Anyone even vaguely
familiar with OS X will be able to pick it up in a heartbeat. The app begins with an assistant
that smoothly guides you through setting up a template. Most of the pre-set templates are so
cool you'll have trouble settling on one. Here's the first screen:
Next, you fill out your contact info, which ties in nicely to Apple's Address
Book API:
Then you pick your card size, which defaults to 10 cards at 3.5 by 2 inches
(I'm guessing 95% of people will want this setting).
Now you'll see the template of your card with all the palette tools:
Everything is really intuitive: edit your text just by clicking and typing.
Highlight the text and select a color from the color wheel to change the color. I mean, I
feel stupid describing how easy this is. Everything functions exactly as you'd expect with
an OS X app.
Now, there are three 'collections' you can look through to add images to your
card: Clipart, Backgrounds, and iPhoto. With Clipart you can add all sorts of stuff like office
equipment, tools, and most importantly all sorts of Macs! One thing I found weird here is that
the commonly used modifier key to constrain an image's height and width isn't the shift key:
it's option. It took me a while to figure this out.
Another slick feature is the built-in Internet image search (using Google I'm
guessing). Type in what you need a picture of and it shows up in the pane on the left, where
you can drag'n'drop it onto your card.
Next up is the background collection, and these are really fun to experiment
with. Here's a quick one I made up:
This app also ties into iPhoto quite nicely. With the 3rd collections tab, you
can look through your whole iPhoto library or just a specific roll, and toss any image right
onto your card.
Once you finally decide on what you want and hit print, an interesting thing
to note is the app asks you how many copies you want, as normal, but leave it at the default
10 copies ... this actually makes 10 cards (I screwed up and changed it to one and it only
printed 1 card out of 10). Another feature to note here is the ability to "Print for
Several People" and select whoever you want from your Address Book.
(Click to enlarge)
A quick fold of the cards to break them apart and you're ready to go!
(Some info blurred to protect the not-so innocent)
(Click to enlarge)
It comes down to this: if you have need of business cards, get this app.
Even if you're not sure you need business cards but think they might help you out, get this app.
This is the type of software that Windows users should see because it's so easy they'll want to
move to OS X. This is what well-designed software is all about.
What else could I give it?
5 out of 5 pants.
BusinessCard Composer
CD version $48.95
Download version $39.95
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