Imprint Plus Canada
When it comes to name badges and business ID cards, most companies tend to go with a simple yet professional and elegant design. And while this would be sufficient for most companies, a company ID has a lot more potential than being just another name tag.
Business ID Cards Are Part Of Your Branding
Branding is all about telling your customers and clients a story about who you are, what you value, and what you stand for. It's a primary ingredient in getting customers to connect with your company at a deeper level.
Branding isn't just about your marketing and advertising efforts. It covers multiple parts of your business, from the way you engage and interact with your customers, to the dress code you have at the office. It encompasses your entire company culture, including your name badges and business ID cards.
This is why it's also important to take the design of your company IDs seriously. Depending on the kind of impression you want to leave for your customers and clients, you want to be able to create a design for your staff that evokes the kind of culture you want to embody and share with them, the kind of culture that they can be proud of.
The question now is, "How do you design a business ID card that creates a long-lasting impression?"
Be Remarkable
In his book, Purple Cow, author and marketing expert, Seth Godin talks about how the best marketing is all about being remarkable. What is remarkable? The way he puts it in his famous TED talk is that being remarkable means "worth making a remark about."
Any product or service that's not worth making a remark about is easily forgotten. The best way, then, to make your business stand out against the competition is by creating something unmistakably remarkable.
The next question we now have to ask is, "How do you design a remarkable name badge?"
German industrial designer, Dieter Rams, is known for developing the 10 principles of good design. While all 10 commandments readily apply even to things as simple as business ID cards, we'll focus only on a few below that are especially relevant.
1. Good Design Is Innovative
Simply put, if you want your name badge to stand out enough that your staff, customers, and clients notice and are impressed by it, then it has to be innovative enough to be remarkable. Don't settle for the usual and the typical. Instead, be creative and try to innovate.
If clients can see your creativity and culture emanate from the little things, then they may be more likely to trust you with bigger and more important things like their businesses.
2. Good Design Is Aesthetic
While the 2nd principle states that good design makes a product useful, the 3rd emphasizes the values of aesthetics. In other words, good design often has a psychological effect on either the user or the viewer.
Imagine the very first models of the iPhone or iPod for a second and think about how each one was very meticulously designed in order to make users feel. Owning an iPhone continues to bring a sense of pride and joy to many of its fans and users. The same kind of aesthetic can and should be applied to your business ID cards. Because there's a difference between having to wear a name badge because it's a requirement, and wearing it because it creates a sense of pride and joy.
3. Good Design Is As Little Design As Possible
This principle highlights the importance of simplifying and focusing on essentials. It's about doing away with anything that's non-essential, and therefore excessive. The more that you're able to cut to the heart of the problem plaguing your customers, the deeper the chord you'll be able to strike with them.
Think back again to Apple's products like the Mac, the iPhone, and the iPod. There's nothing complicated about their designs. In fact, one could say that the design is incredibly simple. Simple yet aesthetic.
Key Components of Good Graphic Design
At this point, let's take a closer look at what makes good graphic design. In essence, good graphic design includes the principles mentioned above. However, actually applying them to your custom name badge or business ID card can be tricky if you don't know what you're doing. So here are a few guidelines to follow when considering what to include and not include in your design.
1. Negative Space
In keeping with the principle that good design is simple, leaving a lot of negative space (or white space) is essential if you want to create a clean design that communicates your message clearly.
Having your name badge filled with a lot of varying colors and hues, for example, may seem creative and fun at first glance. However, the lack of white space or negative space can make such a badge unreadable. This is where white space comes into play. The more white space you allot to your design, the more you create of the second key component, which is...
2. Contrast
Contrasting elements like the differences in size, weight, shape, and color are what make certain parts of your design either blend in or stand out. When it comes to a name badge, for example, you want the name (above all else) to stand out more than anything.
However, if there are certain pieces of information that you also want to highlight (such as a staff member being deaf or mute), then you also want to create enough contrast to have those details stand out on their badge.
3. Composition
Composition refers to the way that a graphic designer chooses to arrange all the visual elements in a design. It refers to the layout and arrangement of all the graphical elements, including lines, textures, fonts, and colors. Good composition takes into account the impact a design has on a viewer, and whether or not the message being relayed is clear and understandable.
Business ID Cards That Pop
Two of Dieter Rams design principles also state that good design is long-lasting and environment friendly, two things we've always been proud of applying here at Imprint Plus. We not only create name badges of high-quality and good longevity, but also make use of sustainable and reusable solutions.
So if you're looking to partner with a business with an excellent track record of over 30 years, check out our website for some of our outstanding business Id cards and name badges.
