Brutal

Designs itself from what you say.
Digital business cards for iPhone wallets.

Brutalist business cards | A micro personal landing page that travels.

Five generated business cards side by side, each from a different spoken sentence, each carrying a QR code. Chef Marco Ruiz on cream with a black scanlined band and an MR monogram; plumber Rosa Vela inverted to black with an actual spanner glyph — the only card of the five whose word the mark table held; writer Ada Nunn on black with a cream halftone band and an AN monogram; electrician David Okonkwo on cream with a black halftone band and a DO monogram; founder Lux Ferro in ochre and black with a grain texture and an LF monogram. Each is captioned with the spec that produced it, and two of those captions show an unresolved word in tildes.
Five sentences, five cards. Straight out of the engine.

  1. Your say

    Say a bit about yourself. Or a lot.

    • Name — resolved
    • Role — resolved
    • Contact — resolved
    • Colour — resolved
    • Style, Vibe, Mood — resolved
    • Animal, Object, Shape — not resolved

    Screenshot — the intake screen: one field, one mic, six lamps

  2. Your taps

    Tap until it looks like you. Fix any field by hand, then add it straight to Wallet.

    • The none ground, rendered by the engine

      none

    • The halftone ground, rendered by the engine

      halftone

    • The grid ground, rendered by the engine

      grid

    • The scanline ground, rendered by the engine

      scanline

    • The strata ground, rendered by the engine

      strata

    • The grain ground, rendered by the engine

      grain

    • The picket ground, rendered by the engine

      picket

    • The notch ground, rendered by the engine

      notch

  3. They keep you

    Share it and it lands in their Wallet. Your links are tappable on the back, the code on the front puts you in their contacts and your birthday in their calendar, and they can pass it on again.

    Screenshot — the pass in Wallet, front and back

Nobody is one person.

A card for each one, each carrying only what you put on it.

Work
Title, work email, company. The one you hand across a table.
The other trade
The second job, on its own card. The first one never sees it.
The business
One for everyone in the company, made on one phone.
Sport
Position, number, team colours. The back is the trophy case.
Strangers
Links only. The code opens a page, not your contact details.
Friends & family
All of it, and the personality they already put up with.
A different mood
Same facts, said at midnight. The design follows the words.
A present
Describe them, not you. Proof you were paying attention.

Not a card.
A page in their wallet.

Scannable add to contacts on the front. Tappable links on the back. Forwardable to anyone. Sitting in the Wallet they already carry.

A dollar a card.

Designing a trillion is free. A dollar makes one official. Two jobs, two dollars. Two personalities, same price. A hundred cards for a hundred friends, a hundred dollars. The card never renews. An immutable brutalist business card, just like the old days, only a bit better: you pay for one, and the box never empties.

Not open yet — no date.

Upgrades

Everything above is the dollar card. It is finished, and it stays that way whatever you do down here. Two upgrades follow. One lets the card change after it has left your hand. The other is for venues.

Chaos was the law of nature.
Order was the dream of man.

You will change your number. You will move. You will change jobs, probably even surnames, and look at life in a different shade. That is for sure.

Redesign it once and every copy changes with it. Nothing to re-send, nobody to tell, nothing to keep running.

Five dollars a year, per card.

It stops being an inanimate object, an immutable record. It breathes: one contact, arriving as whatever the moment needs, and none of the copies go stale.

The pass is Apple’s. The link is everyone’s.

A WWW
A url of your own. Opens on anything, and needs nothing from you.
A pass
Sitting in their Wallet, refreshing itself. Apple decides when.
A contact
The code opens the page, and the page hands over the current you.
A picture
The card as an image. Post it, print it, staple it to a lamp post.
Three a month
Three edits a month. A life changes about that often.
A short back
Room for your links. Not room for a menu.

Leave whenever you like. It changes nothing — still in their Wallet, still scanning, still yours. [no hostages]

Come back anytime and it breathes again, and so does every copy out there. Nothing was deleted. It was only holding still.

Cards for places.

A person’s card changes a few times a year. A venue’s changes before lunch, or when the band cancels.

The restaurant
Tonight's menu.
The bar
What is on tap now.
The venue
Who is playing, when doors open, where the tickets are.
The hotel
One double room, one king with a terrace.
The car park
How many spaces are left, checked from the road.
The gallery
What is hanging until Sunday.
The point of sale
Today's prices. And discount codes.