Big things do come in little packages. To hear the experts tell it,
business cards, if done right, can attract more attention than the
Goodyear blimp.

“It’s the most targeted of all advertising, because it is almost always
given face to face,“ said Lynella Grant, author of The Business Card
Book—What your business card reveals about you—and how to fix it
(Off the Page Press, ©1998).

“It’s a touch thing,” says Bill Vancelette, chief financial officer at
EagleDirect, a direct marketer based in Denver that lets large
corporations order business cards online. “When you go to a
meeting, what do people do? Shake hands and give out business
cards. Watch what people do with them when you give them one.
They pick them up in their hands, they tend to flip them around,
they’ll run their hands over the printing.”

In recent years, the plain white business card has changed radically.
Business cards come in a variety of colors and shapes, and some
even have fold-out or pop-up features. There are, it seems, few rules.
But while the business card is here to stay, some innovations may
not be. Experts say many offbeat cards don’t work. Cards with odd
shapes, for example, can be good and bad—they may be noticed,
but they don’t fit in traditional card holders.

Not all cards are meant to be handed out individually. Some
businesspeople leave stacks of them in high-traffic locations.
Michael Sigety, president of Pic A Card in Bloomingdale, N.J.,
provides hundreds of thousands of cards a month for companies to
display in places like diners and supermarkets. He said cards were
the best way for consumers to remember the names and numbers
of businesses, because the cards can fit inside wallets. “And most
people try to hang on to their wallets,” he said.

Digital technology, instead of pushing business cards into extinction,
has enhanced their reach. “The more high tech we get, the more we
need the soft touch,” Mr. Vancelette said. “More people are carrying
business cards than in the past.”

Technology can work hand in hand with business cards. Scanners,
for example, can feed data from a business card into a computer
database. He also uses Vcards—business cards that arrive as
e-mail attachments and can be downloaded into a home computer
or personal digital assistant.

There is no official data on the number of business cards produced
each year in the United States, but Right Stuff of Tahoe Inc., in Reno,
NV., estimated it at 15 billion. The company produces business cards
with bar codes printed on them. The cards can be fed into a proprietary
reader that downloads the data into a computer, bridging “the gap
between paper and the computer,” said Kirk Korver, a vice president
at the company. “The software, called RightCardReader, was more
accurate than traditional software used by optical scanners for
downloading business card data,” he said.

David E. Carter, a marketing consultant who has written extensively
on corporate identity, sees other trends. For example, college students,
particularly business majors, often carry cards to give to prospective
employers.

Technological advances have paved the way for other changes, too.
More people are using desktop software to design and print cards at
home There are holographic cards, scented cards and "mood sensitive"
cards that react to body temperature. Some businesses now distribute
CD’s to be run in a computer drive, creating a kind of multimedia
business card. Even traditional cards have moved beyond paper:
some are printed on wood, plastic or metal. Many are tiny works of art.

The graphic design world has taken note. Rockport Publishers is
compiling its fifth edition of The Best of Business Card Design.
Kristin Ellison, a Rockport editor, said “business cards offered
high design for the common man.”

Pam Aviles, production director of the American Institute of Graphic Arts,
a nonprofit organization in New York, said cards with printing on both
sides, once considered taboo, were now practical because so much
new information—like e-mail addresses, cell phone numbers and
other data—must fit on them.

Gale Zucker, a photographer from Branford, Conn., stopped using
traditional cards several years ago after clients ignored them. Now
she hands out larger cards, featuring images from her portfolio on
one side and contact information on the other. The oversized cards
have been enormously effective as mini-
résumés.

“I've gotten some good jobs,” she said. One job, photographing
high-level executives of an investment firm, was offered after an
executive of the company picked up-and saved-one of her cards,
which included a picture of three aging munchkins at a Wizard
of Oz festival.

David Formanek hopes that his new card will have the same
impact. His business, Totally Wired Electrical Contracting in
Milford, N.J., had received almost all its work from a division of
Lucent Technologies (news/quote), now a separate company
called Avaya (news/quote). But with Lucent’s troubles, he lost
Avaya as a client. Needing to expand his client base, Mr.
Formanek is revamping his old card, a simple block print on
tan paper. Customers had always commented favorably on
the logo he had used on his truck—a cartoon figure with a light-
bulb head, electrically charged red hair and sunglasses-so he
is putting the same figure on his new business cards.

Ms. Grant, who is based in Colorado, said that at least 85 percent
of cards she saw did not do the job for which they were intended.
“Almost all fail for the same reason,” she said. “They don’t
connect with their marketplace.” But Ms. Grant, who offers
business-card analysis for a fee on her Web site,
http://www.giantpotatoes.com, said many problems could be
easily fixed. She said four of the most common mistakes were
failing to mention the nature of the business clearly, overcrowding,
being too impersonal, and making the print too small in crucial
areas like phone and fax information.

Diana Ratliff, who publishes an online newsletter called the Business
Card Bulletin on her Web site, www.businesscarddesign.com, also
sees many ineffective cards. She finds drawbacks, for example,
in printing on the back side of the card because many people
may never see it, or in using abbreviations and acronyms that may
be understood only by industry insiders. In conjunction with
Linda Caroll, a graphic designer in Mississauga, Ontario, she
ran a contest in her newsletter earlier this year, offering to
fix the five business cards most in need of help. Betty and
Daryl Pierson of Jupiter, Fla., real estate consultants, held
one of the winning cards.

“The redesigned card added lots of color and whimsical illustrations
of flamingos against a backdrop of palm trees.” Ms. Pierson said.
“I was searching for something different,” she added. “It’s the
kind of card, when you give it, people will say ’Wow!’”

Glen Odiaga, owner of Elegant Remodelers, a contracting company
in Highland Park, Ill., contacted Ms. Caroll several years ago about
creating a card to reflect his upscale clientele. The old card, which
was created with clip art on a home computer, had “zero impact,”
Mr. Odiaga said. He did not want a standard logo image like a
saw or hammer. “There was no unique feel to it; everyone copies
everyone else,” he said. “I needed to have something to make me
stand out.” The new card depicts two stately lions, back to back.
Mr. Odiaga says that in the last two years, business has doubled,
and “I think that business card started it all.”

Ken Erdman, founder of the Business Card Museum in Erdenheim,
Pa., said the tradition of business cards went back to the 1600’s.
Over the centuries, color, design and even humor were sometimes
used effectively—a trend interrupted by the Depression, when
cards became more austere as both paper and printing became
more expensive.

Business cards have also attracted private collectors like Jack Gurner,
a photographer in Water Valley, MS. He began accumulating cards
in the 1970’s, specializing in cards of other photographers, and now
has more than 7,000 from that market niche. Other collectors favor
the cards of famous people or just try to collect as many cards
as they can.

Mr. Gurner, a moderator of the International Business Card Collectors
group, says members swap them like baseball cards. There are,
he said, legendary cards—like that of Sitting Bull, said to be in a
private collection in Los Angeles. Mr. Gurner favors professionally
designed cards over cards created on home computers. "You
wouldn't show up in running clothes for a business meeting,”
he said.

And Ms. Grant, who has also seen thousands of cards, often signs
her book with this admonition: “May your life be as interesting as
your business card."