Membership Has Its Privileges
Reviving the wallet-size certificate of belonging
During a 1987 interview with New York magazine, Michael Dukakis — then the governor of Massachusetts — referred to himself as “a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union.” That phrase came back to haunt him after he became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 1988, as his Republican opponent — George H. W. Bush, who at the time was the sitting Vice President — brandished Dukakis’s statement like a cudgel. “He says, ‘I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU,’ ” Bush would declare at one campaign rally after another. “Well, I am not and I never will be!” This line of attack had echoes of the 1950s Red Scare, when leftist figures were repeatedly labeled as “card-carrying communists.”
Regardless of one’s feelings about Dukakis, Bush, the ACLU, or communists, this episode highlights the now-diminished role of a once-prominent element of American life: the membership card. For much of the 20th century, people routinely carried membership cards in their wallets and proudly described themselves, as Dukakis did, as “card-carrying” members or this or that organization. Today, however, membership cards seem like quaint relics.
What changed? For starters, as many social scientists have documented, enrollment in the types of civic and fraternal organizations that have traditionally issued membership cards — the Lions, Kiwanis, Moose, Elks, Jaycees, and so on — has been in steep decline in recent decades. So has membership in labor unions.
And in a world where hard-copy documents are being replaced by digital ones and wallets are being replaced by smart phones, membership cards seem increasingly out of place.
When I recently put out a call on social media for people to send me photos or scans of their membership cards, only a handful of people responded, and the cards they submitted are, frankly, a motley-looking assortment with very little visual appeal. In terms of both quantity and quality, it appears that membership cards are at a low ebb.
And that’s a shame, because membership cards can be very enticing little documents. Whereas anyone can have an ID card (indeed, in much of the world, everyone must have one), membership cards are less universal, more specialized. They signify a certain rarefied status, as well as a sense of belonging and shared values, so they’re simultaneously exclusive and inclusive. If you have one, you’re in the club, literally. And they’re small enough to take with you, so your insider status and sense of tribal affiliation become portable. Who wouldn’t want that?
Membership card history appears to be spotty at best. When were the first ones issued, and by whom? I posed that question to a number of design historians, none of whom could offer a definitive answer. Vintage membership cards listed for sale on eBay and Etsy date back to the early 1900s, but I suspect there are much earlier examples than those (perhaps dating back several centuries, depending upon one’s definition of “membership” and “card”).
I remember my own first membership card quite clearly. It was the early 1970s and I was about eight years old. I had been given an Etch A Sketch, which I loved, so I convinced my parents to pony up the fee — $2, I believe — so I could enroll in the Etch A Sketch Club, which entitled me to a membership card (and also included a subscription to the Etch A Sketch newsletter, packed with exciting Etch A Sketch news!).
I no longer have the card, unfortunately, but I remember poring over it and internalizing every detail: the ornate border pattern, the watermark in the center, the fine print, the sturdy cardstock, the odd wording that I didn’t quite understand (what did it mean to be “in good standing”?). In retrospect, it occurs to me that I was fascinated by almost precisely the same design details on paper currency, which probably says something about the value I ascribed to the card. In short, the card looked and felt very official, and that had immense appeal to me, because there aren’t many chances for a child to feel official. Even though the card was associated with a toy, it nonetheless felt like a totem of adulthood, a gateway to the grown-up world. Although I had no money to speak of (my weekly allowance at the time was 25 cents), I immediately asked for a wallet — another totem of adulthood — just so I could have the card with me at all times.
Four decades later, I now carry only one membership card in my wallet, and it gives me something in common with Michael Dukakis: I’m a card-carrying ACLU member. Paradoxically, this card, which comes from the grown-up world, looks like it was produced by a child — weak design, flimsy cardstock, perforated edges, not very official-seeming. It’s laminated, but I did that myself in an attempt to give it a vague aura of gravitas:
I have three other membership cards that I don’t keep in my wallet, mainly for reasons of space. All are for fairly obscure art and media projects: Project Neon (a website and iPhone app devoted to celebrating neon signage), the Donut Dunkers Club (exactly what it sounds like), and the Society of Shark Fear (ditto). Simply producing and distributing these cards could be considered a function of irony, but I think my childhood assessment still holds up:
A membership card makes everything it touches feel more official, and obscure creative types and their fans probably yearn for that feeling at least as much as eight-year-olds do.
So these cards, much like my old Etch A Sketch card, confer a sense of grown-up legitimacy, but with a bit of a self-mocking wink. Despite this — or perhaps because of it — I think they’re all, in their way, better designed than the ACLU card:
Several years ago I decided to create a membership program for my own obscure media project. I have a website called Uni Watch, which deconstructs the finer points of sports uniform and logo design in excruciating detail. (Yes, it’s a very geeky niche.) For a modest fee, readers can order a membership card with a standardized design on the front and a custom design on the back that mimics the back of a sports jersey of the enrollee’s choice. Uniforms, of course, look very official, so this format meshes well with the world of membership cards.
I think it’s fair to say that the program has been a success. Over 1600 readers have signed up (you can see their individual card designs here), and my designer and I have enjoyed the creative process of producing the various card motifs. But the best part is when I’ve hosted Uni Watch face-to-face gatherings at local taverns and seen my readers — many of whom have long been ridiculed by their friends, co-workers, and spouses because of their obsessive interest in uniforms — pulling out their membership cards and showing them to their fellow readers. The cards are like a secret handshake. Given the degree to which communities and subcultures now form online, perhaps niche websites are the future of membership cards. (Hmmm, what about membership cards for re:form readers?)
Finally, it’s worth noting that a membership card can also be used to send a pointed message. I learned this myself when a Uni Watch reader, upset with something I had written, cut his membership card in half and mailed the pieces back to me. This reminded me of an incident from 1995, when a famous card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association was so incensed over the group’s characterization of federal agents as “jack-booted thugs” wearing “Nazi bucket helmets” that he ripped up his NRA membership card and terminated his membership via a public letter of resignation. As it happens, this person knew a thing or two about the messaging connected to membership cards: It was none other than Michael Dukakis’s onetime nemesis, George H. W. Bush.
