Metal business cards with an articulated hand

Typographer and designer Aehrich O'Dubhchon, who designed those beautiful title cards for our John Hodgman "Spamasterpiece Theater" videos, created some amazing business cards with articulated hands. WANT!

The photographer and craftsman Todd Schellinger asked me to design some metal business cards for his studio Hand + Eye. He gave me pretty broad creative license, asking only that it speak to the tradition of craftsmanship that he brings to each job.

Designing for metal presents many challenges and opportunities. I knew from the start that I wanted to make something that would transform from one state of being to another. What I ended up producing was a semi-articulted metal hand that could hold onto an envelope or an invoice.

Hand + Eye, A Metal Card (blackhoundblue.com)

• [eustace]

  Gorgeous! WANT!
  I used to have a few metal business cards – these were cards that metal fabricators used to make to demonstrate the fine control they had over electrochemical etching processes. Now that laser and EDM have largely replaced those (quite toxic) processes, you see fewer of those cards. This card, though, is in a class of it’s own.

• [dacker]

  I’m very curious as to how they were made. I can only assume it was a combination of ECM and possibly laser etching (for the knuckles.)

  It all could be punched and stamped, but the tooling would be pretty pricey.

  Irregardless, each card would be somewhere north of $1 each.

• [robulus]

  See, thats some nice design right there. Form and function, clear marketing message cleverly communicated. Great work.

• [blackhound]

  I just posted a quick breakdown, answering some of the questions here, as well as others.

  http://www.blackhoundblue.com/2009/01/metal-business-cards-or-how-to-do-them/

• [FPF422]

  Want too !

• [eustace]

  Thanks for the added link! Have you seen Steve Wozniak’s card? (I like yours better :)

• [Trent Hawkins]

  won’t the clients just cut themselves on these?

• [blackhound]

  #8: Thanks. Y’know, I had seen his card, but not that photo. The photo I’d seen looked CGI, so I thought it was a concept. But what you linked to looks the real deal (fingers pressed against the scanner glass, and everything).

  The grille is there to… keep his wallet cool?

• [Felton]

  Ha! When I saw “metal” business cards, I thought of “heavy metal” business cards. Now I want to see if the hand can make the sign of the devil.