Business Cards Aren't Dead, They're Just Getting Weirder

Enter the DIY business card, where odd designs and materials rule. Some people embrace edgy shapes and colors or make cards of metal, plastic or wood. Others carry outsize square cards or tiny ones barely larger than a stick of gum. While oddball cards may make a strong impression, they also risk annoying recipients if they can’t be scanned easily or won’t fit into a wallet or purse.

Greta Schulz

aims to startle people when she hands them her card, which is shaped like a trapezoid with a slanted bottom edge. “People go, ‘Omigod,’ and it starts a conversation,” says Ms. Schulz, a West Palm Beach, Fla., sales trainer and consultant. “You want to make a statement, to make sure people remember you.”

When recipients complain that her card won’t fit in their wallet or card holder, Ms. Schulz says “you’re absolutely right”—and leaves it at that. After a pause, she says, “They say, ‘Oh, you want it to stick out!’ ”

Mel Carson’s

business cards, from Moo Inc., an online print and design company, are three times thicker than traditional cards, with seams of red running through the paper stock. When he handed one to his wife Ashley, she assumed it was several cards stuck together and tried to pull it apart. Mr. Carson, founder of Delightful Communications, a Seattle personal-branding and digital-marketing company, told her that would be a plus if she were a potential business contact: “You’ve just spent 200% more time feeling the card and admiring its quality” than she would have with a traditional card.

Some cards need a safety warning. Famed hacker

Kevin Mitnick

hands out a lightweight metal business card that holds a removable set of flat lock-picking tools. Mr. Mitnick, who made headlines in the 1990s by breaking into tech companies’ computer systems, is a public speaker and chief hacking officer at KnowBe4, a Clearwater, Fla., security-training firm. He gives away about 14,000 of the lock-pick cards each year.

One recipient cut his finger using the picks. “You have to be careful not to push too hard,” Mr. Mitnick says.

Some users question the usefulness of kooky cards. Executive recruiter

Carolyn Thompson,

who collects 1,000 cards a year, is annoyed by tiny cards that fall out of the stacks she makes at conferences. And black cards with indistinct lettering, or those with contact information on both sides, can’t be scanned. “You have to manually enter the information. God forbid,” says Ms. Thompson, managing principal of Merito Group in Vienna, Va.

Alexandra Morris

keeps a stack of square, gold-embossed business cards on her desk. She purchases them for her luxury catering business, Tastings, in New York. “I like the tactile experience, for the same reason I like reading a book or a newspaper.”

Business cards are a welcome alternative to digital marketing for 19-year-old Julia Lubarsky. Photographers’ work is easily stolen from social-media sites. Printing images from her fine-art photography business on the back of a business card that also bears her name and contact information affords a sense of security, says Ms. Lubarsky, a sophomore at Vanderbilt University.

Another photographer,

Ron Wood,

says he’s willing to pay nearly $2 a pop for his metal business cards because people never throw them away. Recipients often say, “This is your card? Are you giving this to me? Are you sure?” says Mr. Wood, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

“You don’t walk down the street throwing them to just anybody,” says

Craig Martyn,

founder and owner of My Metal Business Card, the Fullerton, Calif., company that makes Mr. Wood’s cards. One hundred of the cards weigh 4 pounds: If you carry too many, “it would make your pants sag,” he says.

Hannah Paramore Breen

offers contacts business cards in four colors that match the frames on her four sets of reading glasses. The card color choices are a conversation starter, says Ms. Breen, executive vice president of Paramore Digital, a Nashville, Tenn., creative agency. “Men choose pink a lot. They say, ‘I’m man enough to wear pink.’ ”

Most people exchange contact information via LinkedIn, email, text or airdrops between phones, or by using one of several apps that scan and store business-card contacts. Some novel cards aiming to bridge the digital and analog worlds, such as those bearing QR codes, are already passe.

Traditional business cards remain essential in other cultures. “Having cute cards in cutout shapes doesn’t translate well” in Japan and other Asian nations, where cards are expected to be formal in style and received respectfully, with two hands, says

Michael Schell,

the New York-based chief executive of RW3 CultureWizard, an intercultural training company.

In the U.S., traditional cards with simple block lettering are still de rigeur in such fields as law or finance, says

Jill Tipograph,

co-founder of Early Stage Careers, a New York City coaching service. She advises her young clients to carry business cards “as a point of distinction” during a job search, and to choose a style similar to the business cards or websites of companies where they’d like to work.

Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com