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Plastic Business Cards History

The Present State of the Business Card

Business cards are shared during formal introductions as a convenience and a memory aid. A business card typically includes the giver's name, company affiliation (usually with a logo) and contact information such as street addresses, telephone number(s) and/or e-mail addresses. A professional business card will often (but not always) include one or more aspects of striking visual design.

Business cards are frequently used during sales calls to provide potential customers with a means to contact the business or representative of the business. Today's business cards are produced via a range of printing methods, and are available in a number of materials and finishes. Common amongst these today is the plastic business card.

Business Card Printers Turn to Plastic

Known for their durability, plastic business cards are manufactured using a variety of plastic substrates, including but not limited to: Polystyrene, Polyvinylchloride (PVC), Polyethylene, Polypropylene, Polycarbonate, Polyester and Synthetic Papers. These varied plastic materials can be used to produce matte or glossy finishes, colored plastic stocks, clear plastic business cards, frosted plastic business cards and additional varieties. Further enhancing the design possibilities is the ability to die cut plastic business cards into an almost endless array of shapes and sizes.

Business Cards: the Beginning

Driven by the demands of a fickle marketplace, today's business cards printers continue to explore the limits of design and materials. Current technology gives today's business card buyer an almost incalculable range of options, many of which were simply beyond the scope of technology during the advent of the business card in 17th century Europe.

Visiting Cards

Visiting cards (also known as calling cards) first appeared in Europe during the 17th century. The footmen of aristocrats and of royalty would deliver these first European visiting cards to the servants of their prospective hosts solemnly introducing their arrival. Visiting cards became an indispensable tool of etiquette, with sophisticated rules governing their use. The aristocracies of North America and Europe adopted the practice from French and English etiquette.

Visiting cards included refined engraved ornaments and fantastic coats of arms. The visiting cards served as tangible evidence of the meeting of social obligations. The stack of cards in the card tray in the hall was a handy catalog of exactly who had called and whose calls one should reciprocate. They also provided a streamlined letter of introduction. With the passage of time, visiting cards became an essential accessory to any 19th-century upper or middle class lady or gentleman. Visiting cards were not generally employed by the working classes.

Trade Cards

Trade cards first became popular at the beginning of the 17th century in London. These functioned as advertising and also as maps, directing the public to merchants' stores, as no formal street address numbering system existed at the time. Businesses used their cards as marks of distinction and thus introduced the first modifications in their design. Later, as the growing demand for the cards boosted the development of color printing, more sophisticated card designs appeared, making the cards works of art. The trend toward fanciful trade cards was balanced by the pragmatic need of a growing group of private entrepreneurs who had a constant need to exchange contact information. These users often started to print out their own cheaper business cards.

Business Cards

With the economic leveling of the 20th century, and the wane of social formality, the rigid distinction between trade cards and visiting cards slowly faded except in the highest socio-economic classes in which there remains even today a rigid distinction between business cards and visiting cards. In such social circles it is considered to be in very poor taste to use a business card when making a social call. A business card left with household staff could imply that you had called on business or were seeking to collect a debt.

For the rest of the world, the exchange of business cards has become common even for social introductions. Even today, some people still carry "personal" business cards which contain only personal contact information and have no relation to their employer or business.

Plastic Business Cards

20th century advances in printing technologies and synthetic materials made it possible to print liquid inks onto plastics. In addition to the wide range of commercial applications of this technology, it has made the plastic business card a common alternative to traditional paper variations.

Prized by many astute marketers, salespersons and business owners, plastic business cards will almost invariably outlast their paper counterparts, while providing an-often memorable material distinction for the recipient. It is the differences provided by plastic business cards that allow their users to see them as a valued asset to their business.

CD Business Cards

Recent technological advances have made possible CD-ROM "business cards" which contain digital data. These cards may be square, round or oblong, but are approximately the same size as a conventional business card. CD business cards are designed to fit within the 80mm tray of a computer's CD-ROM drive. They are playable in most computer CD drives. Despite their ability to include dynamic presentations and a great deal of data, these cards are not in common use.

Most handheld computers have the ability to "beam" (send through infra-red communication) an electronic business card, eliminating the need for the recipient to re-key the contact information.

V-Cards

vCard is a file format standard for personal data interchange, specifically electronic business cards. vCards are often attached to e-mail messages, but can be exchanged in other ways, such as on the World Wide Web. They can contain name and address information, phone numbers, URLs, logos, photographs, and even audio clips.

The vCard or Versitcard was originally proposed in 1995 by the Versit consortium, which consisted of Apple Computer, AT&T (later Lucent), IBM and Siemens. In December 1996 ownership of the format was handed over to the Internet Mail Consortium, a trade association for companies with an interest in Internet e-mail.

vCards are accompanied by a proposed standard for exchanging data about forthcoming appointments called vCalendar since superseded by iCalendar; the Internet Mail Consortium has issued a statement that it "hopes that all vCalendar developers take advantage of these new open standards and make their software compatible with both vCalendar 1.0 and iCalendar." Version 2.1 of the vCard standard is widely supported by e-mail clients. Version 3.0 of the vCard format is an IETF standards-track proposal contained in RFCs 2425 and 2426. The commonly-used filename extension for vCards is .vcf.

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Excerpts from Wikipedia, the free encycolpedia.