Moo Minicards: Collect Them All!

my Moo minicards

Jul 8, 2007

Sara Rosso started this trend (at least among the people I know) in Italy, showing off her Moo cards at the Girl Geeks Dinner - she even ended up in Glamour magazine talking about them. I didn't actually see hers that night, but hearing others enthuse, I was reminded that I'd heard of Moo cards already and had planned to look into them. I had been thinking for some time that I needed to get business cards printed with my site URL, to hand out when I review restaurants etc. (no favors asked or given: I don't tell the restaurateur there's a review at stake til after the check has been paid).

I hadn't rushed to use at Moo for my cards because I thought it only worked with Flickr, and, though I have a Flickr account, I don't put many of my photos there (I believe you can use any photos on Flickr that are shared under a Creative Commons license, but I have plenty of photos of my own). I hopped onto Moo.com to check, and found that they had recently made it possible to simply upload a set of photos (in a zip file up to 50 MB in size).

I spent over an hour choosing one hundred photos from my vast collection - mostly my own, but a few of Ross' as well. After the upload was complete, all the photos were displayed in a clean, simple interface with suggested crop areas (for the funky size and shape of the miniMoo cards) already marked. It's possible to move the crop window around and also zoom in or out on a photo (resolution permitting), but in most cases I found that their software had been very clever, and there was nothing I wanted to change about the cropping it had chosen for me.

It was also easy to choose the typeface and color for up to six lines of print to be put on the back of the card.

My only interface quibble was that I had at the last minute removed two photos from the collection to get the zip file down to 50 MB, so two of my photos got repeat prints, and by chance they were two of the least interesting photos in the set. Given my choice, I would have preferred doubles of different photos, but this choice was not offered. I could have uploaded two more photos instead, but didn't want to take the time right then.

Moo have since started accepting orders for cards made from pictures on fotolog and Facebook. Their fotolog offering was launched with an offer of ten free cards; I barely have that many pictures on fotolog, but couldn't resist the freebie offer with its very cute packaging:

This kind of introductory offer is working very well for Moo: Rossella ordered her ten freebies and her 100 pay-ees the same day. But she had already seen my Moo minis and knew she wanted some for herself. I suspect that most of Moo's new business comes this way: everyone who sees the Moo minicards oohs and aahs and wants their own. (Moo also makes notecards and stickers now.)

At $25 for 100 cards (including shipping) they're not the cheapest possible business cards, but they're stylish and personal. It's fun to fan out a whole pack of cards and see what people will choose for themselves. The cards shown in the photo at the top of this page - with photos you may recognize from elsewhere on this site - have all already been taken. I look forward to handing out all of my first set of Moos so I can order more!

World-Class Cases for Moo Minicards

Oct 28, 2007 - There's a problem with Moo cards, however: due to their weird shape, they don't fit nicely in standard business card cases. Sara Rosso was the first person in Italy to find Splatgirl, an artisan selling through Etsy.com (a fascinating marketplace for creators/sellers and buyers of handcrafted items of all sorts). Splatgirl solved the problem of "how to carry around my Moo cards?" with the MooPocket, a colorful little cloth case precisely sized to fit them.

I immediately wanted one, but I wasn't that excited with the choices of fabric Splatgirl had at the time (nowadays she's got a much more interesting selection). However, I have swatches of fabric from various sentimental items in my life, stored up with the idea that someday they might be incorporated into another quilt. I mailed a bunch of little scraps to Splatgirl: Thai silks from my dad's gaudy hippy-era neckties, colorful Ikats from Indonesia and India, some remains of the gold-shot green silk sari I wore to my Woodstock graduation (most of the sari later went into my friend Robyn's wedding dress).

And here's the result:

The one on the left is made from one of those silk ties, on the right is an Ikat fabric I bought and had made into a shirt in India, and loved to death. I kept the Ikat for myself, gave the silk to Karen for her brand-new Moos.