Chicago artist Daniel Nolan is building a tower from business cards that is designed to be monument and creative expression of his experience with corporate culture. You can participate by sending your business card. Watch video for details of how to be included.
I like to blog when I can about interesting business cards I see and interesting people I meet. A few weeks ago my wife and I enjoyed an very nice gallery event at the art gallery of Nancie King Mertz at 2036 N. Clark Street in Chicago. While there I picked up a few business cards of Nancie and her husband Ron. What I love is that they feature examples of Nancie’s beautiful artwork on one side of the card and utilize the back side of the card to share a good amount of information about her work and their gallery and frame service Art De Triumph.
For those of you who have read through my blog or my book “Turn Your Business Card Into Business” you know that I favor cards that use the space available as a kind of advertisement. I believe in the case of most entrpreneurs that you should consider your business card no different then you would a small magazine ad. Additonally when your business involves a product or when your message can benefit from a graphic representation of what you do, you should include a photo or high quality graphic.
In the case of Nancie and Ron’s card the beautiful examples of her work depicting iconic Chicago scenes is a perfect souvenir of my visit to their gallery and perfect reminder of her work and what they offer. So enjoy the cards but more importantly if you’re in the area stop by and see the work in person. According to the business card they open seven days a week. Now that’s handy information!
One of the challenges of meeting a hundred new people and blogging about them is the time it takes to do the blogging, which I am bit behind on. Today I would like to introduce you to Joe Baldwin who I met at a recent alternative transportation event at Uncommon Ground Restaurant on Devon in Chicago. Uncommon Ground has monthly ecofriendly events and great food. In 2009 I had the opportunity to present a networking presentation here to the Edgewater Chamber of Commerce. A side bonus of attending this event was that I encountered and old friend (and his son), who I have not seen in about ten years. This is the other nice aspect of getting out and networking in person. You get a chance to meet new people and open yourself to the random possibility of reacquainting with lost contacts.
Joe Baldwin is an ecoartist working on his Master of Fine Art (MFA). His project is an artistic installation he has dubbed “mobile garden”. The realization is a garden on a flatbed elevated train car attached to a random train and pulled around the city. The idea is to bring joy and an element of spontaneity to Chicago rapid transit riders. Joe tells me that this project concept elicits a good deal of strong reaction, which is an essential element of any work of art. It’s whimsical but Joe hopes that the project will encourage people to think about nature in an urban environment. The CTA has approved the proposal under the condition that Joe’s 501( c)(3) organization “noisivelvet” raise the $400,000 necessary to make it happen. You can learn more about this project at www.noisivelvet.com .
I would be remiss if I did not comment on Joe’s marketing postcard and business card. Joe has one of those 7mm by 3mm business cards that I am not very fond of. These are popular with those who want to make the statement “This is a new card for a new generation” or “I’m a unique trail blazer with a hip different kind of card” or “I’m a non conformist”. Any of which is fine with me but I maintain that a business card by definition is 2 inches by 3.5 inches. This is the space we must “conform” to. This is the challenge of business card design – – to be creative within a prescribed space. Why? Because it is practical. If people could start printing any size and call it a business card what would stop someone from printing an 8 by 10 inch business card? At this point they would become an impractical random lot of paper that would be hard to manage and they would loose their unique advantage of being uniform and convenient. IMO this is not the place to declare your individuality as you simply conform to a new proposed standard. Finally, sorry Joe but I must point out you are lacking a URL on your postcard. I think it is much more likely today that someone would go to your website and send a donation via paypal than send a check. I suggest you buy a nice ecofriendly rubberstamp and bottle of soy ink and rectify that situation ASAP!
Joe Baldwin person number 65 was fun, interesting and thought provoking. What do you think of this idea?
Here is my report from Chicago’s Green Festival complete with a video live from the show floor. In keeping with the spirit of the activity I did take public transportation to the event and had a much better experience than I had a few posts ago. I took the CTA Western bus to Brown Line, transferred at Belmont for Red Line to Grand then I was able to jump the free trolley the final distance to Navy Pier. About one hour total but racked up massive carbon credits for the effort.
This is my third Green Festival in the last four years and I can safely say it has not evolved much. It is still a kind of hippie-like be-in. Combination boutique mall, flea market, food court with a smattering of trade show like activity. The event lacks focus and cohesiveness which is immediately evidenced by the layout that seemed to have only a general plan which causes you to sort of meander rather than follow any kind of route through the exhibits. But it is not so large that you cannot meander around three or four times before deciding you’ve probably seen it all.
I think I am used to attending trade show exhibits at which there is more investment and hope for higher gain. This is very grass roots and the plan of most of the exhibitors seems focused on selling today rather than gathering the oh so important contact info which can be used to build a long term relationship. Since this is a consumer oriented event it might actually fare better as an outdoor street fair with a few bands. On arrival there was what seemed to be a rather long line to get in, but it actually moved fairly swiftly. Since most people had free passes obtained from one of the many promoters, the purpose of the registration was mostly to try and capture an email or snail mail address for future follow–up. Distressingly this task was accomplished by having people fill out little slips of paper which will have to be subsequently decoded and input into a database. Now since I have extensive meeting management background I would seriously suggest that this could have been more efficiently achieved with maybe two or three dozen laptops requiring people to key in their info themselves, or better yet suggesting that people do this prior to arrival then simply confirm their ID with a confirmation number or by finding their name. This would have reduced the thousands of little slips of paper and many of the thousands of free coupons that were printed off. Lastly to confirm your attendance everyone was given an equally un-eco-friendly one-use Tyvek wristband for admission. Why not a soy ink hand-stamp?
Well I set out to meet some new people as part of my challenge to meet 100 New people in 50 days and did okay. I had several casual interactions and a few meaningful interactions who qualify as New people I have met, because I spent a few minutes speaking with them and there was enough of a connection to warrant further interaction. The qualifiers include eco-friendly artist Justin Kovac www.justinkovac.com ; author of the The Vegan Monologues, Ben Shaberman www.theveganmonologues.com ; Dan from www.afreshsqueeze.com promoting simple local green businesses; Tom Tresser the Green Party Candidate for President of the Cook County Board www.tom2010.us ; Tom Hupp of Book Publishing Company www.bookpubco.com featuring healthy and sustainable living books. So that brings me to day 27 of my challenge with 47 new people met. The others I encountered at Green Festival but whom I do not count as new people met are author Thom Hartman; Martin from Chicagoland Construction and Property Services ; Shannon from www.pivotalchicago.com ; a nice woman from Yoga Chicago and a woman from a la card discount dining deck who preferred not to have a video shout out. Those who were willing to play the game can be seen here at my Chicago Green Fest v-log or video blog report live from the show floor. Enjoy this short video production and remember as Kermit taught us, “It’s not easy being green.” At the very least reduce, reuse and recycle. All of the attendees here as well as my gentle readers are invited to network with us live the last Tuesday of every month in Chicago. Go to www.meetup.com/businesscardtobusiness/ for details