Business Card History

Modern business cards forebear, Visiting Cards, were created in China around fifteenth century. The Calling Cards (another name of Visiting Cards) were used by aristocrats. Their function was to announce the arrival of a visiting card owner to whomever he was visiting.

Although our world is big, it is still integrity, and everything within it is strongly interconnected. That is why it's hardly surprising that two century later visiting cards were adopted by the courts of England and France. Visiting cards became an essential part of etiquette of aristocrats and noble people of that time. It didn't take much time for Americans and the rest European countries to accept visiting cards as a part of etiquette, and terms of behavior connected to these cards were also base on English and French systems.

At that time handcraft was applicable to the process of creation of cards; they were produced in large number with printing presses, but before printing each card had to be created by hand. Instead of logos and emblems on modern business cards, visiting cards of that time were decorated with coats of arms that seemed masterpieces.

Aristocrats, however, were not the only class to have visiting cards. The visiting cards were considered essential accessory as early as in nineteenth century. No honorable gentleman or self respecting lady would go out without visiting cards. The common practice was to place a card holder in the front hallway so that everybody could see who was participating at the party and know with whom they could communicate.

In the beginning of seventeenth century, London gave birth to trade cards that further were developing simultaneously with visiting cards. At that age street addressing system was not really existing, so in addition to the information introducing a company trade cards have a map on them; the map was to show people the way to a company place.

Meanwhile printing was becoming more and more advanced. Trade cards could be colored and better designed. They even happened to become the object for collecting. The hobby of collecting trade cards was getting increasingly popular and many companies started ordering cards with pictures, as baseball players, on one side, and contact information on the other side. It was the beginning of modern business cards design.

At that time there were visiting cards serving for personal needs and representing individuals and trade cards aiming at advertising of goods and introducing companies. Evidently neither trade cards nor visiting cards could not satisfy the necessity of salespersons in possessing a means to exchange information in a concise and simple way. First business cards filled the niche and turned out to be very popular. Their design was plain and simple in the beginning, but with the decades passing, they became richer in quality and design. Overall business cards developed as printing was getting increasingly advanced.

Nowadays it would take you a great deal time to look through most of designs and types of business cards. What is more printing companies now provide you incomparable quality of printing.

• Visiting Cards, 17th century
• Business Cards, 19th century
• Calling Card Etiquette, 18-19th centuries

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