We have moved on from the snail mail days and are could even be entering the post-email era: messages are becoming the new mail. But strangely, postcards are surviving strongly. Tho photo shows one in my favorite café.

Nobody will use them to post mail (especially the ones eating in a modern café) — so how do they survive? The key is in the back. Let’s reverse a card.

We see extra information about the graphics on the front side. It is an advertising flyer, shaped as a postcard. The original meaning — sending letters — is lost, but the form remains the same because:

• Cards fit into our hands
• We are (still) getting accustomed to card-size objects

What we use does not have to be logical; it just has to suffice. I used to think that what’s inside is stronger (and more important) than what’s outside, but I might need to bend that theory a bit. Maybe the outer appearance is stronger because it can carry whatever it wants inside.