Business Cards

Over the weekend, I went back to San Francisco and visited my brother's house. I was looking through his housemate's library of books and stumbled upon a book called Business Cards: The Art of Saying Hello.

(Image taken from Google Image Search)

That day while my brother was hosting a housewarming party, I was quietly sitting on the living room couch looking through this book while friends and family interacted with each other. After hours of looking through this book, my brother's housemate showed me that she also had the sequel to this book, Business Cards 2: More Ways of Saying Hello.

(Image taken by me)

By the end of the day, I was completely fascinated with the concept of business cards that I ended up borrowing the second book and bringing up to Davis for the week.

But what's so special about business cards?

Just as the title says, business cards say "hello." The business card is one of the many ways people indirectly communicate with other people. It has become a major part of business, allowing companies and entrepreneurs to make a first impression to potential consumers.

While a business card can communicate what seems to be an unlimited amount of words, it has one major constraint: its size. When communicating through means of business card, people are limited to fit the information they want to communicate - name, business, address, contact information, etc. - into a little space that has to be able to fit into the pocket of a wallet.

Words are one way of communicating through a business card, but by looking through the collection of business cards shown in Business Cards: The Art of Saying Hello and Business Cards 2: More Ways of Saying Hello, images help support these words in communicating information. With a limited amount of words hat a business can contain, images can take the place of words supply an unlimited amount information by visual means. As the saying goes, "A picture is worth a thousand words."