I wanted to create a set of business cards for my graduate exhibition that would stand out, be taken home and then kept as well as show off my personality and creativity. I decided on turning individually photographed instax mini’s into my own branded business cards—and this is how you can too!
Instax Mini Enabled Camera
I purchased my camera from Lomography.com. It is an LCA+ (US$321.37 for the package) which comes as a standard 35mm Camera, you also need to buy the Instant Back (US$105.49). All up the gear ended up costing over US$400, so it is by no means cheap, especially considering the type of digital camera you could buy with that amount of money. The LCA+ is a great place to start because of its built in light metre, which automatically sets the shutter speed for you depending on what conditions you are in. The camera also creates some cool dark vignetting effects around the corners of each photograph.
Another choice would be the Diana F+ (US$52.66), for which you would also need to purchase an Instant Back (US$99.92), which is a LOT cheaper. Another bonus of going with the Diana is that it can use a whole range of cool lenses, one of which is a Fish-Eye lens which works great with the instant back.
You could also go straight to the source and buy an actual fuji instax mini camera, which you can pick up from Photojojo for between $90-$124 (depending on which model).
Stickers
You will need to create two small stickers to personalise the front and back of the instant photo’s. The back size is roughly 86mm x 54mm and the small section on the front roughly 13mm x 54mm. I set up a full A3 page of them and then printed it onto sticker sheets, you can then just cut each one out by hand with a ruler and knife.
Put it all Together
Once you have all your photo’s taken and stickers printed you can put it all together into your masterpiece of a business card! I found that to fully block out the black colour from the back of the instant photo (depending on the thickness of your stickers) I had to first stick on a plain piece of white paper, and then apply the sticker. If there is some overhang from the sticker you can cut it off with a scalpel, but be very careful, because one nick of the photo and it will leak black chemicals all over your card.
Conclusion
Sure these cards are not very likely to come out perfect, the pictures will be out of focus, over or under exposed, dirty and the stickers will be on crooked. But if you are keen to make yourself a set of individual custom cards, where every one given out is different to the next and a bit outside the norm, then I would suggest giving this a go!
