What are the advantages of using Custom Printed Plastic ID cards in businesses?
Identity and access cards have become an integral part of the modern workplace. From employees to customers and visitors, ID cards enable organizations to clearly identify individuals, control access to facilities and systems, and even track activity. For business owners and marketing managers in Dubai looking to develop or upgrade their ID card programs, understanding the capabilities and implementation best practices of plastic ID card printing can help maximize ROI while enhancing brand identity and the customer experience.
At Colour Waves, we have extensive expertise producing durable and secure plastic ID cards tailored to our clients’ specific needs across various industries. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore how plastic ID cards work, key technical considerations and options, and provide an overview of our end-to-end card production and fulfillment process. We’ll also highlight some of the ways properly designed and deployed ID cards can benefit your organization and strategic goals.
How Do Plastic ID Cards Work?
While they may seem simple, modern plastic ID cards leverage sophisticated technology and materials to enable robust security, durability across harsh environments, and more. ID cards can be designed to:
With their versatility and visibility, ID cards are essentially mini-billboards offering a powerful branding opportunity for companies to build brand recognition and influence how employees and visitors perceive the organization.
Key Technical Considerations for Plastic ID Cards
While ID cards may outwardly appear simple, optimizing them for your specific use cases relies on navigating crucial options around:
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Materials PVC and Composite PVC cards offer balanced durability, security, and cost for most applications.
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Dimensions ISO ID-1 card size (85.60 x 53.98 mm) is standard, but smaller or larger may suit certain uses
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Printing Dye sublimation with resin ribbons offers photorealistic quality with durability.
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Lamination Heat bonding durable overlaminates enhances security and longevity.
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Encoding Magnetic stripes, barcodes, QR codes, RFID provide machine-scannable credentials.
There are also additional choices related to card design, security features like holograms, and fulfilling card orders from small batches to large volumes in a secure and timely manner. Understanding the options through an experienced partner like Colour Waves ensures selecting the right mix of card features and functionality for your specific programs while optimizing value.
Enhancing Brand Identity with ID Cards
Well-designed ID cards present a major touchpoint for reinforcing brand identity with everyone that interfaces with your organization. This starts with visual elements like logos, fonts, colour schemes aligned to existing brand guidelines. But for employees, assigned ID cards also cultivate an ongoing psychological affiliation with the values and culture the company intends to convey.
Some best practices for leveraging ID cards to bolster brand identity include:
- Maintaining consistent branding with marketing collateral for a cohesive image.
- Periodically updating card designs in line with refreshed branding campaigns.
- Utilizing vertical card orientation for a billboard-style canvas supporting brand messages.
- Printing motivational slogans or vision statements to inspire staff priorities.
- Showcasing achievements, certifications, or security features to convey trust.
With employees and visitors flashing ID cards regularly in plain sight, designing cards as brand billboards influence public perception, morale for staff, and how your company is experienced.
Optimizing Customer Experiences
While employees may be one of the most visible ID card demographics, tailored visitor and customer cards also offer huge potential to enhance experiences and satisfaction. Here are some of the ways optimized ID cards can benefit customer experiences:
- Fast identification speeds visitor check-in/out while showing professionalism.
- Custom categorized cards (Visitor, Vendor, Client, etc.) simplify identifying critical guest types.
- Promotional messaging engages customers with latest offerings while on premises.
- Photo ID builds trusted relationships and puts faces to names.
- Card-based access control improves customer autonomy to explore facilities unattended.
- Tracking card activity provides usage insights to refine future experiences.
By their very nature, ID cards offer a versatile platform to quickly communicate essential guest details to staff for more personalized and efficient hospitality. They also enable businesses to curate tailored customer experiences based on visitor type, history and organizational objectives around engagement levels.
The Colour Waves ID Card Production Process
With so many choices available, designing, producing and fulfilling tailored ID card programs can seem daunting. At Colour Waves, we make the process smooth from start to finish thanks to our extensive expertise serving clients across industries and applications. Here is a brief overview of our refined ID card production workflow:
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Consultation We start by learning all about your specific program goals, use cases, security needs and other requirements before advising on suitable card materials, features, encoding and fulfillment plans.
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Design Next we create card design proofs for approval, with expert tips for maximizing brand presence and functionality. Revisions are simple to accommodate feedback.
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Production Once approved, card production commences with precision utilizing leading tech like dye-sublimation printing and lamination for vibrant, durable photo ID cards built to last.
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Encoding Desired card encoding formats are integrated at this production stage for seamless data integration during fulfillment.
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Fulfillment Cards are matched to recipient data sets and distributed per desired fulfillment plans with inventory/lifecycle management.
With their versatility, visibility and security capabilities, plastic ID cards offer far more strategic potential than just identifying employees in the workplace. They can bolster brand identity through prominent display to endless audiences. They enable refined customer and visitor experiences via fast recognition and access control. ID cards even drive actionable data on facility usage patterns. By understanding best practices around card printing materials, encoding choices and the production process, organizations in Dubai can optimize ID card investments to realize these benefits.
With experienced account management guiding clients through every milestone while leveraging state-of-the-art manufacturing, Colour Waves ensures ID card programs are executed smoothly, securely, and on schedule for any industry.
FAQs
After consulting on ID card solutions with hundreds of organizations across Dubai, we have fielded plenty of great questions that highlight crucial considerations. Here are answers to some of the most common ID card printing questions we encounter:
Card needs depend largely on your number of employees, expected visitor volumes, and plans around customer or vendor cards. Most organizations budget ~15% extra as spare cards allowing unanticipated growth and self-managed replacement stock for lost/damaged cards. Starting small is perfectly fine too while evaluation needs.
Dye sublimation offers stunning, durable photo quality printing ideal for ID cards compared to other printing techniques. The resin ribbons infuse right into the card surface vs. sitting atop like ink. Pair this with overlaminates to protect images and you get vibrant durable ID badges lasting for years.
Optimize security with features like micro-text, watermarks, tamper-evident materials, embedded holograms, QR codes, RFID chips, magnetic stripes, and more. Complex printing patterns are also difficult for counterfeiters to replicate. We advise best practices tailored to your risk profile, budget and card use cases.
For employees, expiry dates help phase out replacements for faded cards or updated photos, details, etc. Visitor badges are often dated to identify duration. Even external client cards can have expiries after which promotional info is updated. This keeps card content current in line with your changing business.
With tailored consultations and streamlined production systems, Colour Waves can design, print, encode and fulfill complete ID card programs for 500+ recipients within 7-10 business days. This allows swiftly launching new initiatives or replacing legacy credentials.