I recently came across a few old business cards I designed back in 1999. The first ones were for my services as a saxophone player:


A few notes:
- I went mostly by “Matthew” then.
- At some point I decided to remove the home address and say that I was available to play not just alto saxophone but baritone, tenor, and soprano as well.
- The number was the home shared house number, not a cell phone.
- The email was an email address the entire family shared, under my dad’s name.
- HAL-PC was an amazing non-profit local to Houston that stood for the “Houston Area League of PC users.” There was a pretty reasonable annual membership fee, and they hosted a monthly general meeting which had hundreds of attendees, always with a presentation or two and a raffle giveaway at the end. They were a dial-up ISP and BBS/newsgroup host. I volunteered for them by going in on Saturdays where they had a room people could bring their broken computers to and get free tech support, and by hosting a SIG, or special-interest group, around PalmOS called HPUG, the Houston Palm Users Group. This was a big part of the inspiration for WordCamps.
This was for my “design” business:

I would also design business cards for friends, here’s one for my friend who was a percussionist and vibraphonist, Chase Jordan:

I have a big smile on my face. Thanks for sharing the cards, context, and some WP history. I was wondering what to do with my old cards. A blog post, of course. 🙂
Really enjoyed this, Matt, love how those early cards reflect not just creativity but also community spirit. The HAL-PC and HPUG stories are especially inspiring, showing how small volunteer efforts can grow into something as impactful as WordCamps.
What programs did you use to design those cards?
Probably Publisher or Photoshop.
Probably Photoshop or GIMP.
100% you’d have been welcome to join my ska band
I love that you shared these. They are great and I can see that touch of Matt in them. Sometimes I wish I had saved a visual archive of all my business cards since the 1980’s.
Wow, I never knew you as Matthew! I think….