Business Cards Through History

Posted by Hurley Kearns on January 12th, 2021

Exchanging business cards is really much section of modern life we seldom pause to think the place that the custom came from. We get used to it that business cards are affordable for all those, by investing in modern design and printing methods they're able to appear in an infinite various creative or traditional designs. If we think about the business cards almost daily past at all, we believe that they have to have been rather dull and drab in contrast. Let's cast dragonball figurines returning to their origins to see in the event that's true. Today's business card doesn't trace its lineage directly back several centuries. It descends rather in the intermarriage of two distinct forms of cards from past centuries: the visiting or phone, employed for social purposes among the upper and middle classes, along with the trading cards that were accustomed to promote businesses in 18th and nineteenth century Europe, London particularly. Visiting cards have been proved to obtain their origins in 15th century China, but were adopted in Europe first inside French court of the 17th century, where King Louis XIV made them de rigueur for that aristocracy. Visiting cards were an important a part of social etiquette for that upper classes through the entire 18th and 19th centuries: cards were submitted in in advance of a caller, borne with a servant on a silver salver in order that the mistress from the house could decide whether or not to accept the call, or these were simply left with an acquaintance's house, inside expectation they would then return the compliment. These cards were generally quite smaller than average simple in design, usually exactly the name and title from the caller engraved on thick card to generate a good first impression. Trading dragonball collectible figurine evolved separately with the eighteenth century as an easy way of promoting a company establishment. These were the times before advertising in newspapers and magazines became widespread. Trade cards were the principal advertisement for a business. They were made to catch a person's eye, extol the benefits from the product and provide directions for the business premises. The first cards were produced using woodcuts or copper plate engravings, but as new colour lithographic processes became available plus much more affordable, them became more plus much more elaborate and colourful. They became very collectible as well as the more inviting and memorable ones could be pasted into scrapbooks, so there is much competition in designing and producing cards that might catch a persons vision and become kept, very similar much like today's business cards. However using the advance of wide-spread newspaper and magazine advertising in the early twentieth century, these trading cards fell into disuse. Businesses replaced them a version with the visiting card adapted for business use, the early forerunners of our modern cards. While they were less elaborate compared to the trading cards, it wasn't unusual to allow them to be illustrated using a portrait from the owner of the card, using a choice few words extolling their services, and also the address and number of the business. Now it does not take social visiting card which includes fallen into disuse along with the business card that remains the most frequent card to interchange with new acquaintances, although rigid etiquette that governed an exchange of visiting cards has thankfully relaxed. What still continues to be same is always that today's business card is all about setting up a good first impression, catching the attention and being memorable.

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Hurley Kearns

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Hurley Kearns
Joined: January 7th, 2021
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