Taking Risks

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by Meagan Kelso

I work in retail so I see a lot of credit cards. All of them mostly look the same. Horizontal layout on the front and back, the same signature strip, and the names on the front or back bottom left corner. Design hasn’t changed much for credit cards for years. The same layout with different background pictures gets redundant and boring, although I understand the fact that people don’t really care what their credit cards look like, they just pull them out for two seconds to swipe, and then back in the wallet they go. So when someone handed me their credit card, and their name wasn’t in the bottom left corner, I snapped out of that sub-conscious action and actually looked twice at their card. I turned the card around and looked it over and then really thought about something I had never thought about before.

The card was a Chase Slate credit card. And the layout was different from any other credit card I’ve ever seen. It was a vertical layout instead of horizontal. And I stared at it for moment longer thinking, “wow, this is different. I like it”. And as I handed the person their card back the image stayed in my head. I kept thinking about the card even after I got off work.

Seeing something that hasn’t changed in years all of a sudden have a fresh new layout is encouraging. It’s inspiring to know there are designers out there who are so intelligent and are risk takers to bring these small smiles and thoughts to everyday life. The new design is a reminder to break out of the norm, try something risky although other may tell you it will never work. I give props to whoever created that design because unlike other cards it made me stop and look, and think about something I otherwise never would have thought twice about.


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