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Feature: Hints & Tips
A Resource Locator is Not an Address
Or the Value (and Care) of Business Cards
by Geoff Wichert
Thirty years ago, an artist gave me a business card bearing an embossed drawing of a skull. Gripping the skull was a C-clamp. I remember the artist vividly, but I also recall his name, Weiss, and that it’s properly pronounced “vice”. What’s more, I still have that card and his contact information, which I initially kept as much for the look of it as anything else. In the years since, I’ve gathered hundreds of cards. Some were handed to me by their namesakes, while others were attached to professional presentations. Some are quiet, sober objects that I kept because I might need to contact the businesses or individuals they name. Others I have kept because, like Mr. Weiss’s skull, they burn through the fog of anonymity and bring their makers sharply into focus in my mind. A more recent example came from a 15 Bytes book swap, where Jen Suflita was one of several dozen potentially interesting artists I met. Every time I came across her card in my notebook it renewed my curiosity about her art, until I looked her up and eventually wrote an item I about her for these pages.
Setting up a studio shares some of the familiar thrills of any small business. They may include renting and organizing a dedicated space, making ones first sale to a stranger, and designing and handing out a uniquely personal business card. Canny artists ply their skills at every point: visitors to Joey Behrens’s Poor Yorick studio may recognize her self-promoting door from a photo feature in our March edition. Postcards, once the privilege of well-heeled artists and galleries, have become more accessible due to dramatic changes in the affordability of printing. Computers and the Internet have also changed the way most of us keep our address books, as have Palm Pilots, Blackberries, and programmable cell phones. What none of these digital secretaries has done, however, is to replace the lowly business card as a way of creating a good first impression and a lasting connection.
Whether done with a dramatic flourish, a quick handoff, or a respectful bow, trading cards is a ceremony that efficiently weaves a web of connections between persons with common interests or who can be helpful to each other. If you’re writing your address and phone number on a napkin, you’re missing out on the conversation surrounding you—like those TV commercials where the dance of commerce comes to a screeching stop while someone writes a check—and you’re making a tarnished impression. Instantly transferring digital contact information wirelessly is efficient, but the product is bland, bordering on anonymous. Mr. Weiss’s name and number would end up at the back of my alphabetical listing, while his card remains in the front of my mind.
There is nothing wrong with using electronic devices to simplify mundane tasks. Indeed, computers, scanners, printers, and programmable phones came about to do these jobs long before they learned to play games or take candid snapshots. Because they are custom built by their users and usually searchable, they add considerable power to the systems they supplement. But because their memories are more fragile than the devices they replace, they can never fully replace them. Also, despite some flexibility in programming, few offer the flexibility of older systems. Many of my business cards feature hand-written emendations on their fronts and personal notes on the back. My cell phone, by comparison, requires two listings to include both a business and a cell phone.
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For an artist, designing a card should be an opportunity to advertise style and subject matter. Looking at a few friends' cards may help, but shouldn't be allowed to limit exploration in search of what amounts to a logo or a portable self-portrait. Software is available to facilitate printing cards oneself, which makes sense if they will be produced in small numbers. For more prolific networkers, commercial printers offer a variety of choices. Custom printing of an original design—like the free-lance librarian I once knew whose card was formatted and punched to mimic a catalog card—can be expensive, but standard formats include options that can be used creatively.
Perhaps less obvious, but no less important, is setting up a way to save the cards received in trade for ones own and guarantee access to them. Before I figured out why and how to do this, searching for a name or number sometimes wasted hours I'd rather have spent in the studio. Corkboards or Rolodexes are good for a few frequently used numbers, but as the number of cards grows they tend to accumulate in drawers and boxes. Even when electronic alternatives came on the scene, they never made the original cards completely obsolete. No one should use any electronic system without backing it up properly, and while a computer like the Mac, running Leopard, can be set to keep an automatic, external copy of everything on it, some risk remains. In addition, turning a card into a data file requires an extra step that doesn't always get done, and in fact doesn't always seem worth doing with every contact. In the case of data from a business card, keeping the original adds a level of security that no disc can match. And those cards that didn't suggest a compelling reason to store in the computer can be kept, essentially free of effort to transfer, store, or back them up.
There are several systems for saving and organizing cards, available at stationary stores and office suppliers. Plastic pages, punched for use in binders, have pockets sized to hold cards. Once assembled, they can be turned like the pages of a book, allowing a richly revealing analog perusal in place of an efficient but minimally informative digital scan. In addition, since these cards require no keyboarding or backup, cards can be kept regardless of their priority. Few of us want to keep several hundred numbers in our phones, but a card will sit quietly in a file unless, and until, needed. I can still remember the first time I found myself under a deadline and, instead of searching through a whole drawer full of various odd bits of paper, found what I needed neatly filed in a hanging folder labeled “addresses.”
One last thought. In recent years, most of us have come to depend on the Web to provide contact information. This is another good resource to add to ones filing and storing skills, but while the Web is a good way to approach many large organizations, it doesn't take the place of a well-ordered working relationship. The salesman you meet in a gallery may not have an individual listing on its website. Someone who writes her cell number on the back of her card gives you privileged access. Meanwhile, cell phone batteries die, dead zones appear without rhyme or reason, servers go down for maintenance, and every one of us ends up disconnected from time to time. Our contact files may be redundant, but our contacts rarely are. Keeping track of business associates, collectors, and friends are all vital parts of being an artist.
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