Tips for Your ID Badge Design

The fun in starting an identification badge program in your organization is to be able to design the card that will be worn or carried by all of the people in your organization. It is important to have a badge design with important security elements as well as all of the information needed to identify the card holder.

With current design software, it is easy to design a badge that is unique to your brand and is difficult to duplicate. You may choose to create the look yourself or work with a graphics expert to assist you in creating that unique design for your brand.

Things you need to ask and answer prior to designing your badge are as follows:

1. What company elements need to be present on the badge? Your card should reflect the organization in a positive way. Company logos, fonts and standard colors should be present on the badge providing a professional look.

2. What text information will be included on the card? Each card printed will have unique information custom to the card holder. It is a good idea to list the custom data that will be printed on each card. Some examples of this may be: employee name, title, employee number, date of hire or expiration.

3. Will a photo be placed on the badge? Card holder pictures are common in the badges provided to today's organization. The photographer will want to aim for a simple background that will not distract from the card. A chest up photograph can be cropped to fit nicely on the badge.

4. What orientation will be best? After you have the basic elements that are needed on the badge, it is good to decide if the elements look better on a vertical or a horizontal badge. A long string of text will often look better on a horizontal badge that allows larger font in the allowed spacing.

5. What security features are planned for the card? Your company may require the use of proximity cards or additional security features on the card. Placement of these features may determine the constraints of the card design.

6. Will cards be worn or carried? If you will be carrying cards in purses and wallets, it is possible that no badge holder would be needed. Some cards that are worn can be easily slipped into a badge holder. Other cards will need a slot punch to create an attachment area for lanyards, badge clips or reels.

Once the questions above are answered, it is time to move forward into badge design. The template can be created within the ID badge software purchased with your ID card printer system. Sample cards can be printed for review and adjustments can be made as needed.

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ID Card Laminator Versus Plastic ID Card Printer - Pros And Cons

When you are considering acquiring a printer to generate large numbers of membership cards, be it for your gym members, school or college students, or for buyers club members, then the question of what type of ID card printer you should get. The two main possibilities are ID card laminator and a plastic ID card printer. How do they differ and which would be best for you?

In this article we will examine the following properties and decide on the pros and cons of each type of printer: quality of finished product, speed of generation, manual work required, versatility and price.

Quality of the finished ID card: plastic card printer vs ID card laminator: 1:0

There is no doubt that since a plastic ID card is made of a single resin, and there is no need for either thermal or pressure lamination, the final product will look more professional and clean. The difference could depend on the quality of the laminator. When the laminator does a good job, there are no creases or bubbles between the paper card and the plastic pouch, so the final result looks good. But there is no guarantee. Further the laminated cards will always show a clear plastic border needed to seal the plastic covers together. There are no such imperfections with a plastic ID badge.

Speed of generation: plastic badge printer vs card laminator: 2:0

Especially when aided by the blank plastic ID card feeder holding 100, 200 or more blank plastic cards, there is no doubt that the plastic ID badge printer will finish a big job much faster than the laminator. With the laminator, you need to first manually place the paper cards into plastic pouches. Then, you need to turn on the laminator, wait until it heats up. So regardless whether you have hundreds of ID cards to make, or just a single one, plastic badge printer will always be faster.

Work required in generating an ID card: plastic card printer vs ID card laminator: 3:0

As you can imagine, there is quite a bit of manual labor required when laminating. You need to print the paper cards first, place them in pouches and then laminate a single card at the time. In contrast, a plastic card printer can print a single card or a stack of cards in a single run, even without you being present. There is no manual labor involved after you have designed your cards and submitted the print job.

Versatility: plastic card printer vs laminator: 3:1

Versatility is where a laminator wins big. You can pick and choose size, thickness, and color of the laminating pouches, and correspondingly the sizes of your finished ID cards. The size of the laminated product is only limited by the width of the laminator machine, and your paper printer width. Besides small ID cards, you can laminate letter size pages such as restaurant menus, reminder pages, your affirmation pages, and make them sturdy and durable. With the plastic badge printer, you are usually highly limited to a single side ID card. The credit card size happens to be the most popular. While there are some plastic card printers that will print different size cards, they are not common. So you plastic card printer investment will only be good for the ID card printing, and printing of cards of the same size.

Price: plastic card printer vs laminator 3:2

No question about this item either. A laminator is a clear winner. You can get plastic card laminators for as little as $50 and as much as $200 depending on the features, while plastic ID card printers start at around $1,000 and go into many thousands of dollars, even over $10,000 depending on add ons. So if your budget is tight, a laminator is a clear price leader.

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