mass events

type –identity

card
type

How to prepare for printing badges for mass events?

On 21 – 30 June 2019the 29th Malta Festival Poznań took place, which is one of the most important events in Central and Eastern Europe. This year, the artistic program called “Army of the Unit” touched on the theme of conflict and tension between the state of peace and war.

Malta Festival plastic badges

During the festival, you could meet artists and guests to exchange views on current times, and to think about how we should perceive reality, open ourselves to sensitivity and skillfully evaluate matters. In addition, as every year, Malta Festival offered a range of theater, music, dance and film performances. The place for them is Poznań – and not only the center, but also gallery stages, green areas, and everything surrounded by the city’s architecture.

During the festival, organizers, volunteers, artists, technicians, the media and all those who take care of the June event carried personal plastic badges. Thanks to them it will be easy to identify the service staff and guests at a glance. The contractor of identifiers is a Krakow plastic card manufacturer.

Due to the fact that the summer period is the time of outdoor events, the company Polskie Karty Sp. z o.o. prepared a short guide with useful tips, for example how to properly prepare a project for printing badges and what to pay special attention to when creating a database for personalisation.

1. Let’s start by specifying the number of badges needed – it is better to set up a print order for more cards than to worry about their later lack. What’s more, in one order can be several designs, such as “Organizer”, “Media”, “Protection”, “Guest”, “Volunteer” and at the beginning it is recommended to think about how many pieces will fall on each design.

Before starting to design graphics, we recommend that you read the specification available here.

Badges, designs and types of badges - preview

2. The next step is to choose the material on which the projects will be printed. The badges can be made on a white or transparent PVC, as well as on ecological material, which decomposes after 3-4 years.

3. The graphic design should include the place for a hole – preferably min. 5 mm from the edge of the card to the edge of the hole. There are three types of holes: round, oval and eurohole. Each of them fits with a carabiner of the lanyard.

4. The badges should not be too small because they should be visible. Therefore, a format of at least 86×54 mm (size of the credit card) is recommended. The manufacturer of course performs also other formats, such as 105×74 mm, 110×80 mm.

5. Plastic badges can be personalised, e.g. by name, surname, numbering, variable barcode or QR code. You can read more about barcodes here.

VIP badge with name personalisation - visualisation

6. In order to personalise, the manufacturer of badges must receive a database in a spreadsheet (.xls file) with properly prepared data and attached font files (in the absence of information about the font, the default is Arial).

The data in the spreadsheet should be placed in columns, for example:

  • column A: name
  • column B: surname
  • column C: organisation
  • column D: number
  • column E: name+surname.jpg

In the case of photo personalisation, photographs should be prepared at 300 dpi, all images cropped in the same way, with dimensions proportional to the window in the graphic design of the card. The images must be saved in one of the following formats: .jpg, .bmp or .tif and placed in one folder and packed together with the database.

It is a common mistake to save photos in various formats, e.g. 10 photos .bmp, 12 photos .jpg and 8 photos. TIF – cards will be printed after the delivery of photos in one format. Each photo must have a name that matches the name placed in the database. A common mistake is typos and mistaken national characters in the name of the photo, e.g. Max Östern > Max Ostern, pay attention should also be given to double names or surnames, for example in the database Max Östern Norden and photo named Max Östern.jpg.

The database should contain as many columns as there are data fields on the badge + possibly a column with an ordinal number.

There should be no items in the database that are not to be printed (eg due to incomplete data, lack of photos, etc.) – such entries should be removed from the database.

How to prepare a database for personalisation?
How to prepare the photos for personalisation?

7. When designing badges, it should be remembered that 2 millimeters shifts are allowed during the production process, which means that the project on the card will not be ideally centered, as in the above visualization.


In case of any doubts while designing the card or preparing the database for personalisation, the Polskie Karta Customer Service Department will be happy to assist you.

Feel free to contact us!