Sunday, January 21, 2007

Custom pass-along cards, business card size.

The thing I find awkward about the church's full-color pass-along cards is that they are an odd size. You can't put them in your wallet without folding them, and that ruins them for giving away. A woman can carry them in her purse. But a man has to carry them in a breast pocket of his coat, or else carry them in a briefcase. So what if you're a guy who doesn't wear sport coats, suits, or carry a briefcase all the time?

Behold:

See also my second version of the card, a Bible-and-Book-of-Mormon card, and a sample calling card for your name and phone number.

Also see an "invite to church card".

I use a separate calling-card (or personal business card), because I don't want people to assume I'm an employee or official representative of the church.

The business card size pass-along card you can carry in your wallet or regular business card holder with your other cards. So with this, if you have your wallet, you can always have a pass-along card with you!

These are standard sized business cards, which in the United States are 3.5" wide and 2" tall.

I created this online at Office Depot , ordered 2000 and paid $16.99 per 1000. At 1.7 cents per, that's cheaper than the 2.0 cents per that the church charges. But, granted, the church's are full color, with nice pictures.

If that link doesn't work, go to www.officedepot.com, click Office Supplies, click Custom Printing, click Business Cards, click Standard Business Cards, click the second item #166163. $19.99/box, 2 boxes at $16.99/box, 3 boxes at $15.99/box, 4 boxes at $14.49/box. Shipping is free.

Click Customize, and choose format B3.

Not wanting to bother with getting official clearance to use a copyrighted church logo or church font (yes, the church had a font custom-designed for the logo), I used all plain text (no logo) and plain Helvetica font.

Style B1 has a place where you can use a standard logo on file with Office Depot, or upload your own logo if you want. Style B3 lets you put more text in the upper right corner.

317-802-9650 was our local mission office number, now it's 317-580-0479. 888-537-2200 is the nationwide toll free number from the church's official Book of Mormon pass-along card. By including your local (or nearest) mission office, you can eliminate up to two months lag time that is inherent in using the centralized toll free number. I've also heard of stories of referrals from the toll free number getting lost. So if people can call your mission office directly, so much the better. But I include the centralized toll free number for when I'm outside of the Indianapolis area.

It works for me.

If you want to see the phone numbers that the church uses on the other North American (English) pass-along cards, see this post. Program all those numbers in your cell-phone or PDA, and you always have the information to make your own custom pass-along cards on the fly on whatever is handy, even on a napkin.

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