For architects
A digital business card for architects
Architecture has one of the longest gaps in professional services between meeting someone and being paid by them. A card has to still work years after it changed hands, which is a lot to ask of a piece of card in a site folder.
The enquiry arrives three years after the card did
Someone meets you on a job, takes a card, and files it. They get planning, they get funding, they get round to it, and then they call. By then the practice may have changed name or partners, the studio may have moved, and the portfolio they were going to look at has certainly moved to a new site. The one link on that card is dead at precisely the moment it was finally going to be used.
On site, in boots, with the contractor and the engineer
Nobody swaps paper on a site visit. Hands are dirty, there is a clipboard in one of them, and a card put in a jacket pocket on a site is a card that goes through a wash. A code on a site board, on a hoarding or in the title block of a drawing is read in a second and saved properly, and the drawing stays in the project file long after the visit is forgotten.
What it does for architects
Built for a long wait
Change studio address, practice name, partners or the link to your work, and a card handed over three years ago opens on the current version. The slow enquiry is the valuable one, so it is the one worth keeping alive.
Point at the projects you want judged on
The card carries a link you control, so it can open the portfolio, a single project page or an award entry, and you can change which as the practice moves on.
The code belongs on the drawings
Put it in a title block, on a site board or on a planning notice. It leads to a page you can edit, so the printed sheet does not expire when the studio moves.
A print file cut to the right size
Download a PDF at 85.6 by 54 mm with 3 mm bleed and crop marks, in RGB. It is drawn as vector, so there is no resolution to check, and a printer gets trim information rather than an image.
Questions architects ask
- Can I put the code on drawings and planning boards?
- Yes, and the title block is the obvious place, because it survives in the project file. Size it for the distance it will be read from: a site board is scanned from a pavement, a drawing from arm’s length.
- Does this replace a practice website?
- No. A practice is judged on images at a size a card page cannot do justice to. The card is the thing that gets someone to those images, and keeps doing so after the site is rebuilt.
- One card for the practice, or one each?
- Both work. A practice card suits boards and general enquiries. Individual cards suit project architects, because the person a contractor or a client actually knows is the one they will try to reach first.