I recently had a very small run of ’instant’ business cards printed, as I’ve arranged to go to several networking events over the coming weeks, and I realised rather too late that I had only a few Moo cards left and not enough time to re-order.
I threw together a basic design on Friday evening so that I could dash down to the printers the next morning, and I made an on-the-spot decision to not include a job title, instead just going with my name and basic contact details. After all, why should I be defined by my current employment as a designer for a magazine publisher, when my experience is far richer and my future is unwritten? I enjoy my work, but I prefer to not pigeon-hole myself as a magazine designer as I’ve spent many years developing other skills and I have a wide range of interests within my industry, and I try to get this across to people when we meet.
The flaw in my logic dawned on me last night, as I was walking home from the South Coast Design Forum meet in Brighton. Over the course of the evening I’d chatted to several lovely, interesting people, and we’d all talked about our work and our interests and inevitably exchanged cards. I realised later that regardless of how useful and inspiring many of these conversations had been, I’d given them nothing on my card which they would later associate with the person they’d been talking to. Well, other than my name - but in my own experience I’m less likely to remember several new names than to recall conversations with “the photographer”, “the copywriter”, “the architect”.
I still don’t know how comfortable I am with being ”the designer”; I feel my experience has been enriched by the other roles I’ve filled - ”the manager”, “the account executive”, “the printer” - and to give myself the label of ‘graphic designer’ and ignore everything else would surely restrict people’s perception of what I am capable of.
In retrospect this problem should have been obvious. I’ve been designing business cards for other people for over eight years, and advising them on the content of their cards as well as the layout, so I’m quietly scorning myself for having not thought this through. I deliberately only printed about 30 cards as a quick fix to get me through the next couple of weeks, so this gives me an interesting problem to tackle before I order my next batch.