Calling Cards

New uses for an old tradition! In the 1800’s and early 1900’s, a person could of course not pick up the phone, email, text, or post something on Facebook and keep up with their friends and acquaintances. What they did have available were calling cards to request or announce a visit, and a very elaborate set of rules and rituals surrounding their use. This post on the Gentlemen’s Use of Calling Cards is amusing – it describes the subtle ways a calling card could be used to start a friendship, request a visit, brush off a friendship, express congratulations, condolences, or let people know you were leaving on a long trip. The traditional small card engraved only with a name is rarely seen today – we use them to send with a gift and to enclose with a graduation announcement and that’s about it.
In today’s world, we have new and not necessarily improved ways to communicate, but calling cards still have a useful place. Far from a rigid set of rules, you can design a calling card or maybe two different ones to give out exactly the information you want a group of people to have. And freed from the socially correct choice of only engraved black ink on an ecru card, you can choose from many paper colors, ink colors and motifs. Being creative and distinctive is the way to go with your calling cards.

You can do a purely social card with your home address, home and cell phone numbers and email address. My husband and I have cards like this that also have our work phone number them - we give them to people who need to know all the different ways they could contact us.

Some of our customers have a social calling card with their Maryland address and contact info on one side and their summer/winter address and contact info on the other side. We've done cute motifs to differentiate the two homes - one side with a compass pointing north, and one side pointing south, or a crab on the Maryland side and a seashell on the Florida side. And see the Marcus Buchanan card below - we have skylines and landmarks available for many cities, including Baltimore.

A new twist is a calling card with snail mail info on the one side with the phone numbers, and on the other side, email, Twitter, blog, Facebook and website info.

And, one of my all time favorites is a young child's calling card with their name and "have your people call my people" next to their phone number, which they can give out to set up their playdates.