Business Card Composer another easy-to-use BeLight app

January, 2006

By: Dennis Sellers

Having already reviewed Swift Publisher from BeLight Software, I was anxious to take a look at another of their offerings, Business Card Composer.

The box says, “Now you don’t need to be a designer to create stunning cards for yourself and print as many of them as you need — when you need.”

Now, I AM a designer, but I work with a little bit larger page than the 2” x 3 1/2” sheet you use for business cards (I design newspaper pages, which are about 13” x 21 1/2”). So I might as well not be a designer as far as business cards go.

In another job I have done, I had to scan business cards and repurpose them, so, while I may not be a card designer, I know ugly when I see it.

So I was anxious to mess around with Business Card Composer to see if I could make a decent-looking card. I wasn’t aiming for professional, but after working with the program for just a few minutes, I had a professional-looking card ready to print out.

It was amazing. This is yet another easy-to-use program from BeLight. I’m fast becoming a big fan of this company. They make things easy. Their support is great. Granted, I write columns and reviews for a Web site, but they didn’t know that when I had a couple of problems with Swift Publisher. I can’t try that trick on them again, but I didn’t have any trouble with BCC, which is understandable, since BCC is at version 3.1.2, whereas SP was a 1.0 version.

The program comes with 100 inkjet cards so you can print business cards right out of box. I had a nice-looking card ready in about 20 minutes, and 10 of that was looking for just the right template among the 500 offered by the program.

And one of the special features of this program is its integration with Mac OS X. You have direct access to your iPhoto library. You can use Apple’s built-in Quartz filters to work with any image, graphic or drawing. You can design business cards based on any entry in your Address Book.
And BCC is not just for printing your own cards. You can export to PDF (or other formats) to take to a professional printer.

You’re also not limited to just the regular horizontal 2×3.5 card. You can design vertical cards, folded cards, two-sided cards or even those annoying CD-R cards that won’t play in a slot-loading Mac.

The Good

This is the way Mac programs are supposed to be: easy to learn, easy to use and powerful enough to do amazing things, even when the user is not an expert.

As was the case with Swift Publisher, One of the great features of this program is the clip art. The CD includes more than 23,000 clip art graphics, including 7,000 photographic images with transparent backgrounds. The clip art is great. And the advanced printing features available in the program make it easy to print out multiple different designs on the same 10-card template. The program features compatibility with virtually all card stock and even custom layouts. It claims to work with virtually any printer. It worked with mine.

The Bad

One of the same picky things that I complained about on Swift Publisher is present in Business Card Composer. There are no rulers, at least that I could find, to place on the edges of your work space so you can see the scale. And there is no way to set up guides. Granted, the elements of your card kind of help themselves line up by showing a temporary guide showing each element’s relationship to the next (similar to the way elements line up in FileMaker Pro), but I find that to be difficult. Maybe because I use on-screen guides on a regular basis, I’m being unreasonable, but I don’t think so.

The Ugly

Nothing.

I like this program, despite the picky items in the Bad column. Those are things easily corrected and, actually, I can overlook them based on the results I got from this program.
Business Card Composer is available for download from the BeLight web site, but you would do better to order the boxed version because the download version comes with a limited clip art collection. The download price is US$34.95. Box version is $39.95 and is available from the Apple Store and directly from BeLight.

System requirements: Mac OS X 10.2 and higher.

Macsimum Rating: 9 out of 10.