Printing three hundred cards is quick. Getting three hundred names, numbers and photographs into a state where they can be printed is the actual work, and it is mostly done at your end.
Send three things
A spreadsheet
One row per person. Separate columns for surname, first name, registration or employee number, and class or department. Keep them in separate columns rather than one — it lets us lay the card out properly instead of printing a single run-on line.
A folder of photographs
Name each photograph with the person's registration number, so `10234.jpg` matches the row with that number. That one convention saves more time than anything else on a card job.
Your crest
The best quality version you have. We will redraw it if it needs it.
The two things that hold cards up
Photographs that cannot be used
Blurred, very dark, taken at an angle, or with a busy background. A phone camera is perfectly adequate — the problems are lighting and focus, not the camera. Take them against a plain wall, in daylight but not direct sun, with the face square to the camera.
We cannot rescue a blurred photograph. It prints exactly as blurred as it arrives, on a card the student carries for years.
Names that do not match
Photographs named `IMG_4471.jpg`, or a spreadsheet where two people share a registration number. Both mean somebody has to match faces to names by hand, and that is where the wrong photograph ends up on the wrong card.
How it runs
- You send the spreadsheet, photographs and crest
- We design one card and send it as a proof
- You approve the design and check a sample of the data
- We print the batch
Late arrivals are straightforward once the layout exists — we add individuals to the same design at any point in the year, so their card matches everyone else's.
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- ordering
- schools