Business card

Business cards can be conditionally divided into types: personal (family), business and corporate.

Personal business cards are mainly used in informal communication with friends. They are also popular among freelancers . Such a business card, as a rule, indicates the name, surname and phone number of the owner. The position and address in this business card can be omitted. Printing business cards can be made in any style and be designed in accordance with the individual preferences of the owner.

Corporate business card, as a rule, does not contain names and surnames. When printing, it indicates information about the company, field of activity, list of services provided, contact numbers, map, address of the web page. Usually a corporate business card reflects the corporate identity of the company. It has an advertising character and is mainly used at exhibitions, conferences, congresses.

A business card is used in business, at official meetings and negotiations, to provide contact information to its future customers. On business cards must indicate the name, surname, position of the businessman, as well as the name of the company and its type of activity. In accordance with global practice and the rules of the Russian language, first, middle name, and then last name should be indicated. In developing a business card, the company corporate identity and logo are used. Such business cards usually have a strict design. For public servants and deputies on a business card may be an image of state insignia, such as the flag and coat of arms of the country. A business card without an address also does not comply with etiquette. The exceptions are diplomats and senior government officials. Business cards should contain the most readable fonts. It is not recommended to use complex decorative fonts (unless the profile of your activity requires it), italics, and also bold.

According to the first mentions in history, business cards appeared in ancient China, between the second and third centuries BC. Chinese officials pledged by special decree to have cards on red paper with the name and position written on them. These business cards can now serve as an example of restraint and aesthetics: no unnecessary and inappropriate details, except for the name, surname and position.

Samples of early Chinese business cards - e謁 (yè) of the Western Han era - were discovered in Huangshiyan in Jiangsu Province. They are plates of wood 21.5 × 6.5 cm. In addition to serving during visits, they were also used in burials to indicate the name and status of the deceased ^[1]

The first official historical mention of the business card dates back to the reign of King Louis XIV. Having appeared in France, a business card has become a necessity, a symbolic attribute for representatives of the upper strata of the population of that time, becoming for them a must-have accessory. Having the form of a playing card with the name of the visitor (where the name of the business card came from - French. Visite - visit), the business card presented its owner from its best sides.

The first printed business card was found in Germany and dates from 1786. Business cards became a necessity with a whole list of etiquette rules for their treatment. The German aristocracy followed French experience. Subsequently, business cards became an attribute of the ladies and gentlemen of the middle class and were absent from simple classes.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, engraved business cards (then called “visit-ticket”) were already held by the townspeople of Florence and Venice. It was there that at that time printing was well developed. Making business cards has taken on a special form of art, which some of the best masters of that time were engaged in.

To successfully compete with lithographers and engravers, portrait photographers sought to make larger and more impressive photographs. In 1854, the French photographer Andre-Adolph-Eugene Disdery patented a “card de visit” in Paris - a four- lens camera that took eight small photographs of 3.25 × 1.125 inches in size on a “full” 6.5 × 8.5 format photographic plate inches. These eight photographs, each of which was a 4 × 2.5-inch business card, sold for about $ 4, more than half the price that portrait photographers usually requested for one full-size print. The innovation was unexpectedly successful, allowing not only to expand the circle of potential customers, but also to become a collectible. Business cards of celebrities that laid the foundation for the cult of stars began to be in great demand ^[2] . But in 1866, the insatiable demand for a “card de visit” as suddenly stopped, as it began. Disdery invented various innovations in order to bring his dying business back to life, or he tricked into existing photographs like photographs on silk, on ceramics. Nothing helped. He could not defeat the cheapness that he himself had created - the price of "cards de visit" fell to one dollar per dozen.

It was necessary to find a way to somehow store thousands of cards received from relatives or friends who left them after visits or exchanged them on birthdays and holidays. The solution was found in the form of albums for business cards. Some were sold at the usual price, but they were also skillfully made, intertwined with well-crafted and expensive leather. Such an album became an indispensable accessory, an indispensable subject of conversation in every salon and art workshop of that time.

• The most popular business card size in the CIS countries is 90 × 50 mm.
• The format defined in ISO 7810 ID-1 is widely used, credit cards have the same size - 85.6 × 53.98 mm (3.370 × 2.125 inches according to ISO ), sometimes 85 × 55 mm (in the EU ).
• The most effective format in advertising is the size corresponding to the parameters of the purses and wallets sections of the most popular and produced ISO 7810 ID-1 models.
• Less common is the format based on the A8 paper size (defined in ISO 216 as 1/16 of A4 size) - 74 × 52 mm.
• DIN C8 (1/16 format C4 ) - 81 × 57 mm.
• In the United States , the format used is mainly 3.5 × 2 inches (88.9 × 50.8 mm, sometimes 89 × 51 mm).
• In Japan ( Japanese yongō format), the format is 91 × 55 mm (3,582 × 2,165 inches).
• The “Photo” format is 100 × 65 mm.

• Vcard
• Geek code
• Badge
• Couvert card
• Business Card Site

• Vladimir Levashov. Lectures on the history of photography / Galina Yelshevskaya. - 2nd ed .. - M .: "Trimedia Content", 2014. - 464 p. - ISBN 978-5-903788-63-7 .
• L.V. Belovinsky . Business card // Illustrated Encyclopedic Historical and Everyday Dictionary of the Russian People. XVIII - beginning of XIX century / ed. N. Ereminoy . - M .: Eksmo, 2007 .-- S. 89. - 784 p.: - Ill. with. - 5,000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-699-24458-4 .