Sign of the Times: How to Hack a Business Card After Getting Laid Off

If you got laid off, you probably have a mammoth pile of business cards lying around -- a cruel reminder that life is terribly unfair. Enter Cards of Change, an online gallery of hacked business cards made for and by the recently redundant.

The site is geared toward creative types, and it works like this: If you've just lost your job, you take an old business card, scribble notes, drawings, or whatever you want on it, snap a photo, then upload it to the site. The point is to create a trove of inspirational stories about life after work -- "I can be me again!" But, unemployed folks not always being the cheeriest lot, some of the cards read like the 2-and-a-half-inch-by-3-inch equivalent of a middle finger. From Lila Hanft, a reporter late of the Cleveland Jewish News: "No more cubicle hell."

The website is the brainchild of Tom Van Daele, who stumbled on the idea after he was laid off from his job (natch) as a creative director at TBWA/Chiat/Day. In the site's mission statement, he says he wants to help "people who have recently been laid off and connect them with new opportunities from potential employers, business partners and people who make the effort to look on the bright side of life."

We don't know that the site can do all that. But it can certainly help make a dent in that mammoth pile.

[Via Change Observer]