Child of the 80s
Some children dream of being firemen. Some of being
astronauts. I dreamed of having business cards.
I didn’t, just to be clear, dream of having a business. I just wanted to have the cards. Thinking about it sensibly, I suspect this was largely because in the films of my childhood, the ultimate moment of cool was when the be-shoulder-padded gent reached into his inside pocket and flicked out a small rectangle of white card, and said, with that special intonation that’s impossible to capture in text: “my card”.
As a troubled teen, I’d design cards on my Amstrad PcW10, print them onto special pre-perforated sheets of A4, then allow them to moulder quietly on a pile. I was, after all, a teenager, and didn’t have anyone to give business cards to.
Recently, though, I’ve found myself genuinely in need of cards that have some of my details on them. Of course I have cards for MacFormat, but that’s not always what I want to give out, and in any case they don’t have my mobile number on them. And so I designed something and got them printed up properly. The idea, because I’m ostensibly someone who writes for a living and who revels in verbal wit, was to have a card that narrated a little story, telling folks a bit about me, and that, for example, they could call me on this number, but that I prefer to get email at this address. I’m happy with the way they’ve turned out, with lots of little typographic attention to detail and crisp, publication-like black-on-white text; the one thing I’d have done differently with hindsight is to have orientated the cards vertically, the more closely to mimic the magazine pages that I help produce.
I didn’t, just to be clear, dream of having a business. I just wanted to have the cards. Thinking about it sensibly, I suspect this was largely because in the films of my childhood, the ultimate moment of cool was when the be-shoulder-padded gent reached into his inside pocket and flicked out a small rectangle of white card, and said, with that special intonation that’s impossible to capture in text: “my card”.
As a troubled teen, I’d design cards on my Amstrad PcW10, print them onto special pre-perforated sheets of A4, then allow them to moulder quietly on a pile. I was, after all, a teenager, and didn’t have anyone to give business cards to.
Recently, though, I’ve found myself genuinely in need of cards that have some of my details on them. Of course I have cards for MacFormat, but that’s not always what I want to give out, and in any case they don’t have my mobile number on them. And so I designed something and got them printed up properly. The idea, because I’m ostensibly someone who writes for a living and who revels in verbal wit, was to have a card that narrated a little story, telling folks a bit about me, and that, for example, they could call me on this number, but that I prefer to get email at this address. I’m happy with the way they’ve turned out, with lots of little typographic attention to detail and crisp, publication-like black-on-white text; the one thing I’d have done differently with hindsight is to have orientated the cards vertically, the more closely to mimic the magazine pages that I help produce.
