Okay, folks, let’s dive into this “business card no nyt” thing I tackled today. It’s not as fancy as it sounds, just me messing around trying to make a decent-looking business card without spending a dime.
First, I brainstormed. What info did I absolutely need on this thing? Name, title, email, phone number… the usual suspects. I jotted down a few different layouts on a piece of scrap paper. Nothing pretty, just trying to figure out where everything would fit.

Next, I fired up my trusty old word processor. No fancy design software here, just good ol’ Microsoft Word. I figured, hey, it’s got templates, right? Maybe I could find something that wouldn’t make me cringe.
The Template Hunt
I spent a good chunk of time just scrolling through templates. Most of them were… well, let’s just say they weren’t my style. Too corporate, too flowery, too… something. I just wanted something clean and simple.
- I tried a few, plugging in my info, but they just looked…off. The fonts were weird, the spacing was all messed up.
- It was frustrating. I almost gave up and just wrote my name on a napkin.
I decided to start with basic template.
I deleted all the fancy graphics and just left the basic text boxes. Then I started playing around with fonts. I’m no designer, but I know a bad font when I see one. Comic Sans? Nope. Times New Roman? Too boring. I eventually settled on something called Calibri. It looked clean enough.
The Fine-Tuning
The spacing was still a bit wonky, so I spent another embarrassing amount of time nudging text boxes around, trying to get everything lined up. It’s amazing how much time you can waste on something like this.
I printed a test sheet. Ugh. The text was too small. Back to the word processor. I bumped up the font size and tried again. Better, but still not quite right. The alignment was slightly off. More tweaking.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I had something that looked… okay. It wasn’t going to win any design awards, but it was readable and didn’t make me want to hide under a rock. Good enough for now!

So, that’s my “business card no nyt” adventure. Not exactly rocket science, but it was a good reminder that even simple things can take a surprising amount of effort. And hey, at least I saved a few bucks!