A business card was originally created to help people stay in contact with one another. As society expanded so did businesses. What was originally purely local business started to increase in size. If a business was local enough it was not hard to know where you could find them, but suddenly companies were doing business across a much larger area.



People found themselves having to know where a person was in another city, and then in another state. With the advent of telephones there was suddenly more information you need to know about a person if you wanted to contact them.

The obvious solution was business card printing. If each person could hand out a convenient card that had this very information listed on it you could easily remember who a person was even if they lived in another state than you.

The increase in technology not only continued to expand the distances a company could work over, but also added additional means of contacting people. This has increased exponentially in the past twenty years or so.

Suddenly people had fax numbers, cell phone numbers, pager numbers, email address, not to mention multiple buildings and address in a large number of different cities. With this massive increase in information the business card became even more vital for staying in touch with people, but it also made creating a business card more complicated.

The more complicated your business card becomes the harder it is for a person to get the information from it that they need to. All of starts to blend together, or people were given too much to choose from, and so they did not know the best way of contacting people.

At the same time business card printing became more customizable. Business cards were no longer just boring black and white. Vibrant full color business cards popped up. Odd custom business cards were spread around. Having a card that people took notice of suddenly became a powerful means of marketing and helped you get remembered.

This brings us to today, where you have so many different options for customizing your card that you can do almost anything.

What was the point of this little history lesson? The point is that business cards are still made in order to help people get into contact with you. This little fact has a habit of getting overlooked and forgotten when it comes time to make one. Designs sometimes are given more attention than the contact information, or literally down at the expense of the contact information.

I do not mean to say anyone should stop trying to make custom business cards, but be sure that you know what the real function of your card is before you get any business card printing done. You want them to be memorable, sure, but they were originally made for a reason. Do not forget why business cards were developed in your efforts to make them unique.