Digital Business Card: Best Way To Make A Lasting First Impression

Business cards have long been the primary way to present ourselves when building new contacts in the real world, (you know the one outside our office window). For years, the business card has had the same design, and at best you have had the option to choose what kind of paper and print it should have. In recent years, more creative business cards have surfaced. A new digital business card could come and change all that with a more interactive design.

The idea comes from Tom Ward, a business card pioneer on Intstructables, who has a radical and fresh look at how we’re supposed to present ourselves in the real world. There are plenty of ways that we can present ourselves and build new connections online, but there are few interactive ways we can do so when it comes to face-to-face interaction. That is what the digital business card created by Tom is all about.

If you want to be remembered by the people you meet, it is important that you make a good first impression, one that lasts. With the digital business card, it is impossible to fail. It’s basically a dot matrix scroller screen with a set of trigger buttons. The card has a flash memory built in which your contact information is stored on. Pressing one of the available buttons will trigger the information to be scrolled on the digital business card’s dot matrix screen.

If you have a good idea, anything is possible and even though this is a DIY project, it is definitely one of those business cards that you will remember. As we all know, to make a lasting impression is everything in business and with this digital business card, as said before, you can be sure the receiver will remember you.

A little information about the build itself is that the design is really quite simple for what it does. It has a matrix of 5 x 15 LEDs, connected to a single-chip “PIC” micro-controller. A handful of resistors and switches complete the design. By keeping the micro-controller in sleep mode, (unless the buttons are pressed) the battery can last several years and still allow a couple of thousand displays of your messages. The build is around $5 per card so it might not be something that you would mass produce. However, if you want to be remembered this is a way to stay on top of your game.

Tom Ward’s Digital Business Card – Dot Matrix Scroller