ICM - Leeds Design Agency

You think you are obsessive? Get this.

American Psycho is a 2000 cult thriller film staring Christian Bale and directed by Mary Harron based on Bret Easton Ellis’s novel of the same name. I don’t like the film particularly, I’m not that keen on horror or psychological thrilly things. To be honest I prefer the Pixar movies when I have to choose.

However.

There is one particular scene that I love (shown below). The main character is in a meeting with his peers (who also happen to be his arch rivals). The main character – Patrick Bateman and his shallow co-workers are pitting their business cards against eachother, debating the merits of bone, eggshell, and off-white card – fonts and letterpress finishes. Bateman panics when he realizes a friend’s card is better than his because of its stylish superiority. At the end of the film my wife commented about this particular scene and how it showed the messed up character and his twisted obsession with his business card and how the scene was very creepy.

I stopped and was a bit taken aback.

From my own personal point of view, the discussion in the office had been the most normal thing IN the film. In a cinematic journey through psychotic murder in the most brutal way I thought that particular scene was to illustrate the normality of the situation. The internal monologue of Bateman mirroring the same voices in my head when I receive someone else’s business card (or other literature). Feels like uncoated 180gsm with a mat lamination on one side, 5 colour (you can’t get THAT blue out of 4 colours!) with a Spot Varnish for the Logo. Thats what goes through my head.

Not in your head? Why not??!!?? Take a look at your business card, have another look at your literature. What does it say about you? Sometimes it is the first contact that you will have with a customer. The first impression that you will give to a potential lifelong friend and business partner. Quality can be found even with the leanest of budgets, just ask and we will find a way.

On the way back from the film, my wife was quiet – maybe she thought I was a little bit psycho. She removed all of the knives from the house. The voices in my head say that she is wrong to criticize the collection of Letterpress business cars that I have secreted in a fireproof blanket under the floorboards.