The Humble Business Card: We Need You! Give generously: the name you give could be your own!

By ''VOICE OF THE INDUSTRY" James Cryer

What is it that weaves its way through our everyday lives? 

Tells a story of the rich and infamous?

Is shared by friend and foe; worker and boss?

And which is a source of invaluable information.

But which we tend to discard like yesterday's fish-wrapper at the drop of a hat?

The humble business card.

Notwithstanding the many attempts to obliterate it and drive it from history, it keeps bouncing back, brighter and more flamboyant than before.

Once, printed only on one side, always in black (and in either grotesque-sans or Park Lane script) it looked more like an invitation to a funeral.

Now, they're printed both sides, often in four-colour process, sometimes with fancy die-cutting and embellishing, they look more like a miniature work of art, more befitting an exhibit in a museum of modern art, than tucked away in someone's desk drawer, never to be seen again.

This brings me to my point: business cards stashed away in business card-holders, gathering dust, are of no value.

But! brought together, properly grouped by categories, they suddenly come to life like cuckoo-clocks at midnight all chirping away telling their own unique story.

In other words, when business cards can be brought together, into a central collection, they suddenly become an important record, a ''who's who'' of our industry.

They're non-judgemental, too, in that such records don't include just the ''great and the good'', but also the scallywags, the ne'er-do-wells, the achievers and wanna-bees, the successes and failures. 

Infact, a collection is like life itself: a rich and varied tapestry.

Such a collection maps out a fascinating trajectory of our industry as it zig-zags its way like a drunken sailor through the highways and by-ways, the back-alleys and wide boulevards; the good times and the not-so-good - as names leap from the pages, like a roll-call of actors in a long-running melodrama. (Or maybe soap-opera, Days of our Lives springs to mind.)

But this is a story with only actors. No one wrote the script. The participants themselves are the story. 

A central collection becomes a saga of the common man, as much as it is a story of the great and the good, all blended together into a giant mix-master to produce a rich pot-pourri like raisins in a giant fruit-cake.

When brought together (and joined in holy matrimony?) a collection of business cards is a tribute to our resourcefulness and ingenuity, and a testament to our industry's diversity and capacity to keep re-inventing itself.

Sadly, however, this rich tapestry is lost as we tend to discard the old in favour of the new.

This appeal is to all those who may have old card-holders burning a hole in your desk-drawer (or attic?) and yet don't want to ''throw them out''.

The Old Friends Society (in conjunction with the LIA) are encouraging everyone to donate your old cards, so we can form a central collection: one that will form a permanent record of our industry.

Please contact me if you have some cards to contribute [email protected].