Get Your Business Cards 2.0

Moo.com is not alone in its digital printing efforts. It competes against Web print outfits like Vistaprint in the business collateral market, and with CaféPress for more general custom printing.

Moo.com offers a satisfying, professional experience. All business is done at the clean, well laid-out company Website. Users are prompted, akin to many Web-based business offerings, with several simple options: cards, mini-cards, stickers and several others. We chose cards, because Nick needed those since he joined us earlier this year. And creating them is simple. Upload up to 50 different pictures, then crop, zoom and adjust to suit. In our case, that was our company graphics and if you don't have those, you can use one of the thousands of designs that Moo.com provides. They are perfectly fine for basic use.

Then the service prompts for text and layout scheme. We found nine templates. We could then tweak alignment, colors, card stock and some other basic features. Then we are asked to lock in a design and file it on the Web. Nick spent all of 40 minutes on the full process. And I can easily see us making cards in half that time once we get familiar with the tools.

Now, there are major limits to Moo. First, you are working in a limited design environment similar to early HTML editors. There are limited fonts, colors and layouts. Picture uploads are also a pain. Moo.com puts strict rules on sizes and layout. Nick had to do some major editing with an image manipulation program to finagle the sizes. And the end results are clearly a step below true custom printing. Edging was a bit ratty. Image resolution wasn't perfect. And the card stock was a bit low-end for my taste.