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 Mar 22, 2004
By: —Eoban
Easy-To-Understand Cocoa App Offers Many Options
I never knew I needed a business card until I tried this program.
BeLight Software apparently realised not too long ago that if you or I wanted a business card, one
could probably use Photoshop, and hope to get the alignment and dimensions correct when printing it out,
or maybe have Kinko's design a simple one for me. But neither of these solutions are actually very good.
The rather blandly-named Business Card Composer offers a great way for just about anyone to create a
professional-looking card, even if they have little or no experience with graphics software. In fact,
you don't have to do any positioning or adjusting yourself if you don't want to; from the beginning of
the process, BCC asks if you'd like to use one of around 150 pre-sets. Some are better than others, but
any will let you create a decent-looking business card in about 30 seconds. If you have your own
contact information entered in Apple's Address Book, BCC automatically reads what is there and fills
the text fields in for you, cutting my creation time to a remarkable 10 seconds.
But pre-sets tend to look just like, well, pre-sets. I wanted something more unique looking.
Fortunately, BCC has hundreds of clip art files, an integrated web image search, and the ability to
alter the colour, size and style of any text or basic shape on your card, which you can add by dragging
and dropping.
Now, a little interesting bit. If you use BCC's images and shapes, it's really easy to make a card
that wasn't designed by you at all. Depending on how you view your own artistic ability, this may be
good news or bad news. If you're looking for a truly unique look, you're better off not using BCC's own
images; produce your own in Photoshop, then use BCC for layout. BCC has guides that pop up whenever you
need them to, and it ensures that you won't waste a perfectly good sheet of card paper by printing
misaligned cards. With Photoshop, you'd be on your own in that regard.
The Business Card Composer main interface (click to open a larger image)
As for obvious downsides, they are hard to find. The first is that palettes aren't extremely
resizable. The Properties palette, for example, won't stretch down very far. This is slightly annoying
when there is a lot of stuff to scroll through, and you are running at a high-resolution, but you can't
stretch the palette down very far. Additionally, there didn't seem to be any way to make the left
sidebar its own palette. Next, a few of the images could probably be of higher quality; a few looked a
little fuzzy, especially when made larger in size.
I should also mention that you may not want to print your cards yourself. Fortunately BCC can export
to high-resolution PDF or TIFF, both of which any copy shop will accept.
Lastly, for many people, it may be hard to justify buying BCC when the program might be only be used
once. But that is the nature of business cards; it's not BCC's fault. If you find yourself frequently
changing your card, or are in charge of distributing cards for many people in your business, or work at
a design firm, or like having several designs for your card, this app is to die for. It's combination
of features, ease-of-use, and price, US$40 (which looks mighty attractive compared to an app like
QuarkXPress), makes this one of the better programs I've ever seen. Business card creation is a niche
market, but BeLight must feel great to have filled that niche so elegantly.
http://www.belightsoft.com/composer/
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