Example [355].—This card in Bodoni and Bodoni Bold capitals, letterspaced, with the use of a few rules, has distinction that could be successfully carried to other forms of stationery. The contrasting heavy and light rules blend with the heavy and light lines of the Bodoni Bold.
These specimens will convince both printer and user that there is more than “one right way” to design business cards. Typography is the interesting study that it is because, to paraphrase the words of Shakespeare, age cannot wither nor custom stale its infinite variety. Some style of typographic treatment is available to meet the likes and dislikes, preferences and prejudices, of every one using business cards. The strictly conventional person can be supplied with a strictly conventional card, proper in all details. The artistic person, he of the flowing tie, can obtain a card with sympathetic qualities. The noisy huckster can be supplied with a typographic effect that almost shouts the message it contains. In fact, character and personality can be expressed typographically on the business card, and the printer will find this matching of typography with human nature an interesting study.
A large city wholesale house cannot afford to circulate the cheap-looking, inharmonious cards that some owners of small shops on side streets seem pleased to use.
EXAMPLE 352
A business card with a large amount of copy
More than an ordinary amount of thought should be given to the physical construction of a business card. Because of the present great interest in all forms of advertising, more individuality is permissible than formerly. As typography can give distinction and attractiveness to business cards, printers should study the use of type on this class of printing, and give their customers the best possible service.
EXAMPLE 355
Distinctive treatment adaptable for general stationery
Printers are producing cards in imitation of intaglio work to satisfy customers who do not consider that a truly typographic design “looks like a business card.” There is no use denying that copperplate engravers set the style for much of the business-card printing. Shops doing this imitation work should have samples of the best card work done by engravers, so that their imitations may be as accurate as possible, so far as concerns style, face and arrangement. There is little pleasure in being an imitator unless you are a good one, and here is opportunity to gain a reputation for the clever printing of imitation engraved work. Good stock, a dense-black ink and perfect types are means to this end. Pleasing results have also been obtained by using green-black ink or dull gray-black ink, which assists in conveying the soft, pleasing effects of lithography.
