The Mysterious Power of the Business Card
Posted by Tyler | Filed under Work
Strange as this may sound, I have always had the dream of having my own business cards. Since the first time I saw someone pull out a shiny piece of white cardstock with a bright logo and a jumble of black text, I have been enthralled. The business card symbolizes, in a way, the final transition from childhood to adulthood. The diploma is often touted as the object that represents that transition, but to me, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The business card is the true harbinger of adulthood, with all its freedoms and responsibilities. Because you don’t just have a diploma, you don’t just have a job, you have a career.
The business card screams, "I am important." It says, "You need to get in touch with me, and I have anticipated your needs. That’s why I have prepared this helpful compendium of contact information. When, and I do mean when, you need to get in touch with me, here’s all the information you need."
On top of all of this – and do we even really need more evidence that business cards are cool? – they are fascinating from a design perspective. A business card is typically 3.5" x 2" (or 8.89cm x 5.08cm, for those of you of the metric persuasion), and it has to contain a fair amount of information. Also, you want a business card to be catchy, especially if you’re using it for marketing purposes. You want your potential client or customer finding it while fumbling through his wallet three months after you met. When he sees it fall to the floor, if it catches his eye, he might just give you another call. Since I am so fascinated with minimalistic, clean designs (take a look at this website, or my desktop wallpaper collection), I find the design challenges presented by the small form factor interesting. Over the years, there have been several different designs and form factors tried by companies. It all depends on your business market and what message you’re trying to send with the card. For example, you can buy CDs cut into business card shapes that you can burn with a sample portfolio (if you’re a graphic designer), or a piece of music (if you’re a studio musician), or whatever. You can have your info on the outside, and some digital information on the disc. Sexy. Sometimes it’s somewhat simpler, though. The Microsoft XBox team, for example, has two sided cards. One is in English, and the other is in Japanese. When you consider their market, it makes a lot of sense.
I ordered my business cards during my first week at Microsoft. I was pretty anxious to get them. :-) Unfortunately, my department does not spring for the full color Office cards (in case you didn’t realize, Content Management Server falls into the same business category as Office at Microsoft), so I got the standard grey/black cards. Don’t get me wrong, my department isn’t exactly frugal – we get more than we need – but money on business cards can be better spent elsewhere. I do wish I could have paid for full color ones out of my own pocket, though. I would have. My main regret is that I couldn’t have an ingenius title, like Andy Hertzfeld did on his original Apple cards. Tyler Butler, Software Wizard does have a nice ring to it, don’t you think? :-) (As an aside, the folklore.org site is incredible. The anecdotes there are hilarious and fascinating. I spent countless afternoons at my old job just scanning through and reading them. I wonder if there’s a similar site for Microsoft, Sun, IBM, etc. out there somewhere. I am sure the engineers and software designers from those companies all have interesting stories they could share…)
But enough whining. My business card is still cool, and my title of Program Manager makes me sound far more important than I really am. I keep one on every desk at home and at work to remind myself that I have a career, that I am important – at least, important enough to have a business card – and that yes, I do work at Microsoft. Everyone could use a little reminder of that once in awhile. :-)
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