Business Card Doodles

Trent Hamm – Founder & Columnist Last Updated: September 5, 2013

Perhaps the most well-known post in the history of The Simple Dollar is Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance on the Back of Five Business Cards. That article was borne out of my attempt to summarize my views on personal finance down to five small illustrations – and it was a big hit.

Whenever I go to meetings, I tend to wind up with lots of business cards. Most of those business cards come from people that are just trying to hand cards to everyone – and I have no interest in contacting those people, ever. Instead of chucking them, though, I usually save them in a pocket in my laptop bag, and I’ll often pull them out when there’s an opportunity to doodle or an idea comes into my head. The backs of business cards make nice little spots for doodles and short notes, so I take advantage of it.

Sometimes, those doodles are really pointless – swirls and the like. Those cards end up in the trash.

At other times, I’ll jot down a phrase or an idea or a picture that succinctly nails some idea that’s floating around in my head. Those are the cards I hold on to. I stick them back into another pocket in my bag and go through them every once in a while. After years of doing this, I have a big pile of them.

The other day, I was searching through my bag for a computer memory stick when about half of these cards popped out all over a table. A friend of mine was standing there, picked up a few, and leafed through them with a smile on his face. He laughed at the last one, then scooped up a bunch more and browsed through them. I didn’t really mind too much.

After going through all of them, he said, “Some of these are great. You ought to pick out some of the best ones and share them with your readers. Seriously.”

So I’m following up on his suggestion and presenting ten of the business card doodles I particularly like. You’ll notice that some of these relate quite directly to earlier articles on The Simple Dollar – and some are completely out there on their own.

Enjoy. If this is a big hit, I may post another batch someday. If not – well, it was a noble experiment. Big props to Gapingvoid and xkcd, both of which inspire me with their similarly spartan drawings.

Oh, and feel free to print off any of these and do whatever you want with them. If you want, remix them, redraw them – whatever. If they inspire you, that’s all that matters.

Dearie