I have been asked a few questions about the importance creativity in business cards by the Instore Magazine. Here are the answers:

Why are the creative business cards so important?
Business cards are part of your attire, besides their obvious informative function. People judge your status and taste by looking at your card. Business cards are probably the single most important element of your company's identity. It gets the most attention and it's the most personal of all. It's also a design challenge as it's relatively small, has to be cheap to produce and ideally adhere to standard sizes.

How could you analyze a situation with creativity of business cards in the world?
My estimate is that less than 10% of cards can be considered well designed. Even big corporations tend to print good design poorly, which destroys the effect. People don't realize that their cards are a piece of their image and persona given away to other people, it's not just a piece of paper holding information. Cards are like shoes in a way. Both can say a lot about you.

Have to be all business cards creative?
Creative business cards with unusual solutions have their own place and not for everyone. Certain conservative professions require simple and elegant typography. Everyone else should have a creative card if they can find an idea. Sometimes it's really hard, especially if you need to design a card for yourself. It requires a certain critical and cynical view of yourself, which is very hard to attain. It's much simpler to draw a mental caricature of others.

For what positions can be creative business cards harmful?
High positions of all kind, such as CEOs, political leaders. People in a position where confidentiality or trust is important. Such as doctors or bankers. But there may be exceptions to there generalizations. I can imagine a cool card for a dentist or a loan agent. Humor can break the ice and it may help build personal relationships with their clients.

You can see a bunch of creative cards I collected here and here.