A few business card typography tips off the top of my head:
— White on black (inverse) is less legible, so all else equal compared with black on white the font should be bolder and/or bigger for equivalent readability. (Using caps or small caps is also OK in display text like titles, if it reads easier.)
— Legibility is also impaired by visual noise around the text (it’s not a single color but there is some pattern, for example). Compensate for that, too.
— Unless you really know what you are doing, stick to one font. You can use bolder/lighter variants of the same font.
— Never compress fonts vertically or horizontally. Instead, pick a different font. Many fonts have condensed/compressed alternatives, or there is also Impact if you want it.
— Use white space. Padding lets it breathe.
— Use typographic features. Em dashes (separate them by thin spaces), bullets.
> Embedded Design⠀⠀⠀Hardware ∙ Firmware
or
> Embedded Design — Hardware, Firmware
vs.
> Embedded Design - Hardware/Firmware
That said, everything except the first two is subjective. A relaxed vibe of “don’t give a damn about it” might be strategic if you are good at what you do (and crucially it is not design), as long as your card is legible and does its function.
I personally think it is better and I like it a lot more. On the other side the concise “Shake Me” is fun, and “Powered by Rust” makes sense there. Curious how would it look when in physical form…
I was thinking of throwing in a game like Tetris with just accelerometer controls. That'll be after I find a job though. Numbers were actually the first things I displayed, I actually still have all the code to display them still sitting unused.
Text has been less of a success. Having the letters be easily legible takes more space than I would have thought, and the small pixel fonts don't look great with the big spacing between the LEDs. Maybe some scrolling text would look good, but I haven't focused on it too much. I tried getting a QR code displayed, but it didn't want to scan.
For buttons, I'm kind of married to the idea of no buttons. The accelerometer does recognize clicks and double clicks in different directions, so that might be useful for something.
I encourage anyone who wants to fork/contribute/post issues on this to do so and I'll try to be a good maintainer.
Thanks for the detailed reply. I actually like the idea of using the accelerometer as input device and the design choice of using no buttons.
What’s the update rate of the LED matrix if I may ask? Maybe the combination of an accelerometer and the LEDs lends itself to a persistence of vision display?
I might be wrong, but you might need need (at least) a 23x23 LED matrix to have a white border around the outside to give it the contrast needed (the "quiet zone", since QR data is black).
This is why my first prototype had a white border around it. The LEDs were red back then, so I don't know exactly what I was thinking, but I was aware of the problem.
The card is so impressive that it doesn’t matter much, but I think that if you remove half of the text in that card and make it very legible it would burn your name into people’s brain.
The card should not have any text on it, but show his info on the screen when the card is first shaken, and after it has been held still for 4 seconds, before going to sleep after another 10 seconds of no motion.
https://github.com/Nicholas-L-Johnson/flip-card/tree/main/fl...