These 3D printed business cards will delight (or annoy) your new contacts

Imagine you’re at an industry event — say, a check-out-our-new-office party for that trendy startup — and you meet someone who’s just dying to stay in touch with you.

What do you do? Exchange business cards? LOL, sure thing, Grandpa Joe! No one has business cards at this party, and you didn’t want to incite mockery by bringing yours. Ok, how about Bump? Not everyone’s got that app, unfortunately.

Then, the new mystery person plunges her hand into a voluminous purse and hands you a one-inch cube of hard plastic. It’s got some contact information; it looks cute, like something you’d try to move around in a video game.

You eyeball it suspiciously as your new contact gushes about how quirky it is and tells you about CallingCube, the company that makes it. She tells you she got 80 for $300 and isn’t that a better deal than Moo cards, which people just forget and throw away anyway?

You turn it over in your hand. It’s solid green, engraved in black with a phone number and name. As you roll it around in your palm, you also see a simple logo on one of its sides. It reminds you a lot of a die; you start to wonder how you could make a drinking game out of it.

Your new friend says something about how you’re not supposed to get the cube wet and then mills off in someone else’s direction.

You have to admit, the cube is unique. It’s noticeable, and it would stand out in a stack of business cards, for sure. So you go to put it in your…

Purse? Pocket? Where are you gonna put this thing? It’s small, but it’s still too big to go in a wallet. You think again about the person who gave it to you and decide that since you don’t have a concrete reason to stay in touch, the cube will have to be a sad casualty of cocktail party networking. You snap a photograph of the email adress side of the cube and glance around surreptitiously before sliding the cube under a small, crumpled napkin.

A couple months later, you’re cleaning out your phone’s photo gallery. You barely think twice before deleting the picture of the cube.