The evolution of a business card

Our business cards have arrived!  Yes, I said "our", not "my", because this year there are 2 members of our family who want to let people know how to contact them on social media:  yours truly and The Pea. Yes, The Pea is even busier on her social media channels than I am (no, it doesn't bother me; I actually prefer it to texting, which she doesn't do, because I can follow her conversation on social media), and she wants something to hand out to the new friends she makes at summer school and summer camp.


I ran out of business cards ages ago, but I didn't attend BlogHer 2012 so I didn't bother ordering a new set.  As a result of my procrastination, I've been writing my social media accounts on napkins at every blog event and press event for the past year.  Not cool.

For my latest set of business cards, I've changed the design yet again.  I like keeping things fresh!  Here's the last design I chose (for even older versions, see the evolution of my business cards!):

I loved those cards, and I received many compliments on the foldover design, but it wasn't very practical: the fold made the cards extremely bulky, so I couldn't carry very many with me without looking like a pack mule.  So I went back to the standard size.  I also ditched the pink/brown/black color scheme and went back to green and brown (I love both palettes so I'll probably switch back and forth between them!). What do you think?

Here's The Pea's card.  She designed the whole thing herself, and I think it's gorgeous.  She has gotten to be quite good at photo editing!  She took a photo of herself and transformed it into a work of pop art, superimposing a teal, green and gold pattern onto her features.  She also applied the same color background to her font -- the letters aren't a single color, rather, they're a swirl of colors, like the inside of an oyster.  She probably would have gotten even more fancy and designed the reverse side, but due to time constraints she had hers done via Office Depot's same-day printing service, so she didn't have the freedom of layout that I had (mine are from Tiny Prints).

I thought the most interesting thing about our cards was how the social media accounts on her card differ from mine. Unlike the old fogies (i.e. her mother), she does not include a blog address, Pinterest account or Facebook account  -- instead, she included iMessage, Kik, Snapchat and Instagram.   Her next set of business cards might have a completely different set of social media accounts (she'll probably get her own Facebook account next year, but she thinks it's for old people so I wonder whether she'll use it regularly).  And notice how neither of us included our addresses or cell phone numbers! That would be completely unthinkable 15, even 10 years ago.  When you think of it, these business cards are like a snapshot of how communication evolves by age, and over time.