Cards as an interface metaphor have been around for a while thanks to Twitter and Google. But,  Vox has recently made their cards embeddable and are working with other publishers to distribute them, so it’s time to get deeper into cards as they evolve in the wild. (side note: Good interview with Ezra Klein covering the why’s of their card strategy)

Overview of the design metaphor

Intercom.io’s manifesto-ish take on cards is probably the best place to start.

But, not surprisingly, Benedict Evans might have been onto the trend first.

Koi Vinh takes a stab at defining cards. Focuses on presentation and the introduction of 3rd party data.

Taylor Davidson has a good overview of where cards came from. Importantly, he teases out the difference between the design/presentation issues and the the idea that the card itself can be platform.

The Rise of Mobile Cards by Cezary Pietrzak is a great primer

Jerry Cao at TNW provides a design-centric overview of how cards fit into the UI patterns.

Tools and Platforms

Cardstack.io is building a whole ecosystem around Cards.

Wildcard is news app (I think). It’s also an SDK and platform for creating and viewing cards.

Citia is a content marketing platform that uses cards as the primary UI interface.