Networkers Rejoice: Business Card Composer

There are some things that even the most advanced cell phone or laptop can’t replace.  Tops on that list is the business card - it’s one of the easiest ways to represent yourself or your company while meeting someone new.  Trying to find a card that will represent yourself or your company can be a huge challenge - the clip art and fonts available at your neighborhood office supply store or print shop don’t necessarily have the best reputation for being contemporary.

Enter BeLightSoft’s Business Card Composer.  The software publishing house that brought the Mac community publication-driven titles like Art Text, Swift Publisher and Printfolio has supplied a fantastic alternative to chain store business cards.

The WYSIWYG program offers templates broken up by category - Classic, Conservative, Sophisticated and Text.  Designs in the Classic and Conservative categories include color blocks, single and double initial monograms, and simple shapes in horizontal and vertical orientations.  Sophisticated designs get bolder with larger designs, background photographs, and textural effects.  Text designs are neutral and mostly graphic-free, leaving the user free to add their own logos or designs.

There are also templates for folding business cards and CD-R labels.  The folding card templates borrow from the Classic and Conservative categories, with more color blocks and a few simple logos.  CD-R labels are a little more far reaching, with some photos and designs inexplicably not found in any of the business card templates.

If templates aren’t your style, there’s a blank card option.  BeLightSoft has included a large collection of stock photographs, clip art and graphics in Business Card Composer.  Along with the photos and graphics, there’s a range of borders and corner graphics that are easily manipulated to fit vertically or horizontally oriented cards.

For the most custom of custom cards, files from your own iPhoto library are easily imported into Business Card Composer, and just as easily resized, edited and manipulated to fit the boundaries of the chosen card size.  Images can be used as foreground or background, and can be as opaque or translucent as desired.

Adding and formatting text is a snap - one click on the text tool, one click within the body of the card, and text entered appears on the card.  Lines of text are easily rearranged on the card - click and drag and the text anywhere on the body.  There’s no grid to stick to, so text can be dropped anywhere you think it looks right.

BeLightSoft’s Business Card Composer is by far the best alternative for anyone looking for a custom printed business card with their own style, no matter what the style is.  It’s a safe bet for designs ranging from the conservative to the most contemporary and everything in between.  It’s available directly from BeLightSoft starting at $34.95 and is Leopard compatible.