I’ve been working at a certain television station in San Francisco for a few months now, and during those few months of work there have been a couple of times when I’ve met people and wished I had business cards to hand out.

Rather than ordering some business cards through the station, I decided to take matters into my own hands and design my own. After about an hour, the end result was this:

These are what I’m calling “Living business cards:” Simple cards that contain a quick reference or QR code in place of a logo or mugshot. When scanned, the QR code above links to http://qr.matthewkeys.net, which at the moment redirects to my main website but in the future could redirect anywhere I’d like. Eventually, I’d like to design a special landing page for mobile phones and tablets that, when scanned, contain my phone number, mailing address, email address and so on.

QR codes bring a whole new level of interactivity to business cards and other kinds of promotional material. One could place a QR code on their business card to link to their Facebook page or online resume. News organizations could start placing them on promotional index cards, where the code links to their mobile news site or links to the iTunes store for app downloads.

I built my QR code here and designed them through Zazzle.com. The total cost was around $20, which included shipping, for a box of 100 on plain white cards.