Somewhere between a 200-person corporate shoot and a succession lawyer in France, I decided what Diptica really needed was new business cards. Not paper ones. Wood. Laser-engraved miniature 35mm film strips, because apparently I hate sleeping.

The idea was simple, which should have been the first warning. Take our logo, the one with the little dP camera and the signature, shrink it onto a slice of plywood shaped like a frame of film, add two QR codes on the back, done. A card that says "we shoot photo and video" without saying a single word. Elegant. Clever. The kind of thing you hand someone and they don't throw away.

Then I turned on the laser.

The first batch taught me that plywood has opinions. Burn too hot and the wood scorches like a bad steak. Too cold and the engraving looks like a rumour. The film-strip perforations, those tiny square holes along the edges, are the whole charm of the card and also the fastest way to set fire to your own design if the cuts overlap wrong. I spent an evening producing what I can only describe as artisanal charcoal.

The QR codes were their own special hell. Engrave them too small and your phone refuses to acknowledge they exist. One side sends people to my vCard, the other to a little landing page where they choose which version of me they want, the production company or the more personal, slightly darker gallery work. Two doors, one card. Took three tries before both doors actually opened.

The real plot twist was efficiency. I laid out six cards on one sheet to save time, and the laser, in its infinite wisdom, decided to engrave one word across all six cards, then jump back and do the next word across all six, wandering around the sheet like a tourist with no map. It was slower than doing them one at a time. After some quiet swearing and a dive into the optimization settings, I convinced it to finish one card completely before moving to the next. Revolutionary concept, apparently.

And then, finally, they worked. A clean stack of little wooden film strips, each one cut, engraved, and smelling faintly of campfire. They feel good in the hand. They're warm. They're the kind of object that makes someone pause for a second before they slip it into their pocket, which is the entire point. A card you remember is a card that did its job.

Would I recommend making your own wooden business cards? Absolutely not. Did I order more plywood the same week? Obviously.

If we hand you one of these in the wild, hold onto it. Each one cost me at least one small piece of my soul, and the smoke detector's trust.