The GoMedia Arsenal Calling Card Competition!
Cyan Ta'eedEditor’s note: This competition has now closed. Thanks to those that entered 
Everyone has a business card, but how many of you have a calling card? In ye olden days, before telephones, text messaging, email, or Skype were invented, if you wanted to talk to someone you just went over to their house. If they weren’t there, you’d leave your calling card so they knew that you’d been by and they could go visit you later.
We here at FreelanceSwitch feel that the calling card is well overdue for a renaissance. Giving a business card to a social acquaintance implies that you are your job – and we think that’s a little one-dimensional.
So, we’re launching a competition in partnership with the lovely gents at Go Media to design your own calling card!
The two best calling card designs will win a Go Media Vector Arsenal prize pack with every one of their amazing vector packs. That’s almost US$370 worth of royalty free vector art - and well over 1000 complex vector illustrations.
The two best entries will also be profiled on FreelanceSwitch with the biography, logo and photo of the designer, and a description of their business. If you’re after some free publicity then enter this one, as this will be viewed by at least 12,000 people just on the first day and could lead to a lot of solid leads!
So what do you need to do to win these great prizes? Design your calling card using one of the free samples provided by Go Media.
Download here (3.9MB EPS file)
Remember, these cards should express who you are as a person, rather than what you do for a living. We want to see daring, witty and expressive calling cards!
To enter, here are your steps:
- Step 1: Download the GoMedia Arsenal vector samples
- Step 2: Using one sample or more, design your calling card
- Step 3: Show both sides in a 500px by 500px white box (see how we did it below)
- Step 4: Upload it to this form by the 17th of November!
To give you an example, here are the calling cards Collis and I designed for ourselves:
As you’ll see I’ve used a vector element and Collis who isn’t so good at following rules used an Arsenal texture (yes they do textures too!). Entrants do need to use vectors, but you can do whatever you want with them - use them in a background pattern, make them the focal point of your design or mess around with them and come up with something new (they are vectors, after all).
If you’d like some inspiration, you can check out Step by Step: Using Vectors at the Go Media blog.
Entries close at midday on the 17th of November (Sydney time) and you can enter more than once if you’d like!
Hollye
October 17th, 2007
Sounds l like a fun project!
Squawk
October 17th, 2007
Uh, juicy, I will definitely give this a shot.
A calling card? I guess that means that I have to get my phone working…
MattT
October 17th, 2007
“A calling card? I guess that means that I have to get my phone working…”
This isn’t calling as phone calling. This is even more old school. When just stopping by for a visit in the old days, one was said to have come calling. I suppose it got its name by the visitors literally calling to the person “Hey, we’re here! You home?” or somesuch.
Cool contest. Modern times being the way they are, with folks locking up when out and not likely having servants to answer while away, what would a calling card be used for? Like a personal business card, but exchanged in social, rather than business, situations?
Dinu
October 17th, 2007
Nice contest. I submitted a couple
When I hear calling card, long-distance phone calls come to mind. Guess I’m not form the bygone era.
Cyan
October 22nd, 2007
Thanks for all the entries guys! It’s very exciting to see everyone’s style
@MattT: “Like a personal business card, but exchanged in social, rather than business, situations” - that’s exactly how we thought of it! I like the idea of having a social card and a business card - one that’s appropriate for business contacts and one for social acquaintances. If you have a corporate business brand, you can let your hair down with your calling card - show people who you really are in your downtime. Obviously in the real world often social and business contacts will overlap, but I do love the idea of having a calling card that expresses who you are rather than what type of work you do.
Guido
October 22nd, 2007
Sounds interesting! I’ll design mine soon for this competition. I never did one though, but it’ll fun.
k
October 23rd, 2007
superb thought, this is indeed. keen to upload some good stuff soon. but one doubt: do we necessarily have to stick to any of the free downloadable vectors or are we permitted to add some of our vectors/ backgrounds/ designs too?
k
Cyan
October 24th, 2007
@K: Add as much of your own stuff as you want, but we do need you to use one of the GoMedia vectors somewhere in there to be eligible to win
Pete Marshall
October 24th, 2007
How many entries are you allowed to submit?
Ravi Vora
October 24th, 2007
I’m definitely going to give this a shot.
George P. Schnyder
October 24th, 2007
As i wanted to make a calling card (didn`t know that you call them so) and was looking for some cool vectors to design it I’m definitely on.
GPSchnyder
Ben Orr
October 25th, 2007
So I entered one. Can I submit another? Thanks for the contest. Fun.
Cyan
October 25th, 2007
@Ben: I just saw yours and it’s gorgeous (and you appear to have the most angelic and beautiful offspring ever)!
Submit as many as you like - the more the merrier
section 8
October 25th, 2007
Is there a way where we can see all the entries?
NDSTR
October 25th, 2007
Great !
Submitted my first work,
… at work for a second one :_)
Freelanceswitch + GoMedia + PSDTuts = ROCK
Arik
October 27th, 2007
Just submitted my first one. I must say that 500×500 is a very small size. I created the cards at business card size with 300dpi and then had to shrink them to like around 40-30% of their original size. Lost a lot of detail I put in there.
chikoKF
October 29th, 2007
Thank you very much mates for bring us this opportunity!!this type of challenge are great for motivation and for to demostrate our hability and concepts!!!
Peace from Spain!
chikoKF
October 29th, 2007
Excuse me,one quesrtion:
Can we use textures on our design?If it is affirmative..Go Media textures only????…
Thanks!
ahmed
November 2nd, 2007
that’s a very cool competition i like it very much i uploaded my 1st but i wish i could see the other cards and see comments about mine
Joshua Lanphear
November 3rd, 2007
Man, I never realized how hard business cards were.
Thanks for this amazing competition. I didn’t have any good pictures of myself, so I just used a bit of my work.
I thought it came together alright.
Good luck everyone! I can’t wait to the winners!
TEK
November 3rd, 2007
Are we required to use just this vector pack or can we use ANY of the gomedia freebie vector packs?
Chemist2dio
November 7th, 2007
thanks for this one. I’ll probably give this a shot!
George P. Schnyder
November 7th, 2007
Just submitted mine. Do we have to wait till end of November to see the other entries?
Would like to take a look a them
Will we be informed when the entries are online? Or will we have to monitor this site?
GPSchnyder
Celeste
November 7th, 2007
I’m excited to look through the other entries as well. Will they all be displayed once this is over, or even better, before?
bLuefRogX
November 11th, 2007
Sounds like a rather fun thing to do, I’ll see what I can come up with
sujan
November 14th, 2007
hey…awesome idea…i would like to know one thing…
the example card…the blak one…i see that they’ve used a go-media texture…how does one achieve that black overlay effect?
the origainal is here…
http://www.gomedia.us/arsenal/textures.php
it’s the same sample pic in the “concrete” pack…
Arty
November 16th, 2007
Hey,
This is great!
I really had fun creating the card.. More than one entry coming from me!
Sure would love to see everyones creative!
JIm
November 20th, 2007
Hey,
What a great comp!!!!! Thanks Freelance Switch/Go Media!!!!
Had loads of fun designing my submissions…….hope you like them.
Can’t wait to see the other entries.
Cheers
VP
Locos
November 21st, 2007
Hey Sujan watch this…
http://psdtuts.com/designing-tutorials/making-a-print-ready-business-card-using-only-photoshop/
Spencer
December 1st, 2007
eh, who won?
Celso
December 2nd, 2007
Whatever happen to with the contest? is it still on who won?
David Sparks
December 13th, 2007
yeah when in the world are you guys gonna announce the winner.
i entered and im ready to see what other people sent in.
come on
George P. Schnyder
December 13th, 2007
Yeah, what’s up with that one?
Celeste
December 24th, 2007
Hope the editor hasn’t died.
celso
January 4th, 2008
Have you guys forgotten about us? I hope u had a good time on new year’s
hyro
January 6th, 2008
no updates,no winner,no nothing!!!can we view all the entries here…
fedmich
January 9th, 2008
we wanna see too
red
January 18th, 2008
hey, what program d you use to create a calling card?
steve
February 1st, 2008
Where can I print my finished design? I checked some major online places (like VistaPrint) and your template didn’t agree with their size and aspect ratio.
Suggestions?
steve
February 1st, 2008
Does it matter that the template is RGB? I thought that print material must be CMYK, but when I convert the template to that mode it looks terrible despite my best remedies!?