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Business card is an important formal document used during formal meetings. Business card is used to introduce the company products and its policies. It acts as an important documents or sometime representative of a company. This is a formal documents shared during meetings and works as a memory aid for an individual. The basic components of a business card is the giver's name, company name with its logo, contact information such as street addresses, telephone number(s) and/or e-mail addresses. It can be made more striking by adding some sort of visual designing. Business cards are used for the sales promotion. This is a one step solutions for all business related information. Customer can access to the company website and its contact information without much hassle.
The term business card evolved from the traditional trade cards and visiting cards. Present day business card is the combination of these two term. Visiting card was initially adopted by China in the 15th century and later by European in the 17th century. It became one of the important tool of mannerism and seriously covered all the rules of visiting cards. The concept was adopted from the French and English etiquette and later made its presence in North America and rest of Europe. Visiting cards included refined engraved ornaments and fantastic coats of arms. It works as a witness of the proceedings or meetings. A list of cards kept in a card tray provide complete list of individual's or company's information. This is a sort of catalog, which can be effectively used by the customer to get complete list of information on company's business. It also provide a sort of basic introduction of a company. In the 19th century it became an important accessory for the upper or middle class people. It was not very popular among the working groups.
Then comes the trade cards, it became very popular in 17th century in London. The main functionality of the trade card was to advertise the products and provide site maps to the customers. It was so beneficial at that time as there were no proper system of street addresses. But, with the popularity and demand of this product, it started coming up with more designs and styles. There comes the color printing and that completely changed the pattern of business card. The concept of fancy trade cards was started by the private business person as they were required to exchange their cards frequently.
Current usage: With the economic development, the concept of trade cards and visiting cards were also refined. In the 20th century a strict line was drawn on its uses. But, its correct implementation was only restricted to the highest socio-economic classes. Even, today a business card is prohibited in a normal social meeting. It is considered a poor taste of mannerism, if used for social meetings. But, the things are only relevant to the high socio-economic class. In rest of the class or world it is still used for the social introductions.
Dimensions: The basic standard size of business card as defined by the ISO 7810 ID-1, is: 85.60 by 53.98 mm . The common size used in the United States are: 3.5 by 2 in (89 by 51 mm)
Other formats: Today, business card is available in the form of CD-ROM and contains 35 to 100 megabytes of data. It comes in various sizes like square, round or oblong but the basic size is the same as of normal business cards. This is designed in a way so that it gets easily fitted into the computer's CD-ROM drive. It can be easily played in most of the computer CD drives. Besides its presentations as well as storing capability, it is still least preferred cards in the business industry.
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