BadgeMaker Design Archieven

Create a card design with our company badge maker

Design your employee ID with our company card design software

Written by Margriet SpriensmaFriday May 3rd, 2024

Creating stunning professional employee IDs has never been easier thanks to our company card design software BadgeMaker Design, a core component of BadgeMaker. With BadgeMaker Design, you can create professional card designs tailored to your specifications, including backgrounds, dynamic fields, shapes, images, barcodes, signatures, and passport photos.

Step 1: Create a New Card Design

Start by launching BadgeMaker Design and initiating a new card design. Set your design preferences, including card format (standard CR80 or custom), single- or double-sided layout, Magstripe options, and portrait or landscape orientation.

Step 2: Add Background & Logo

Next, customize your card design with a background and logo. Choose from a selection of pre-designed backgrounds or create your own using the shape or image tool. Incorporate your company’s identity by adding your logo with ease. Simply use the image tool, click on the canvas, and select your logo image. Resize the logo as needed using the corner handlers.

Step 3: Incorporate Static & Dynamic Text

With the foundation of your design in place, it’s time to add text. Whether you need static text for simple designs like gift cards or dynamic text for cards with personalized information, BadgeMaker Design makes it simple. Maintain a consistent layout while accommodating variable data for each printed card.

Step 4: Personalize with Photos & Signatures

Take your card design to the next level by adding ID photo and signature placeholders. These placeholders automatically link to the cardholder ID photos and signatures in your BadgeMaker Identity project, ensuring seamless personalization.

Ready to get started? Download BadgeMaker today and unlock the power to create stunning card designs effortlessly!

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BadgeMaker Design, ID Card Software

BadgeMaker Design Gradients: How to add multi-color gradients to your card design

Written by Margriet SpriensmaMonday March 28th, 2022

BadgeMaker Design Gradients – Thank you for choosing the card design software BadgeMaker, this post shows you how to add a gradient background or other shapes to your card design.

BadgeMaker Design: Multi-color gradients

Step 1. Add a shape element to your card design

To add a gradient background to your card design, select the shape tool and click on the card. Resize the shape to cover the complete background of the card. Go to the “Style” tab in the element properties and set the line thickness to “0”.

BadgeMaker Design -Add a shape as background

Step 2. Change the Shape color to a linear multi-color gradient

The background color of an element can be one color or a multicolor gradient color linear or radial. Click on the linear gradient icon to create this gradient, set the angle of the linear gradient in degrees and click on the “+” button to add more colors to the gradient. To select a different color click on the color box you want to change.

BadgeMaker Design with multi-color gradient

Step 3. Change shape color to a radial multi-color gradient
Click on the radial icon to change the gradient to a circle. Select how you would like to stretch the gradient using the stretch mode.

Start creating Badgemaker design gradients now.

BadgeMaker Design with a Radial Gradient

BadgeMaker Design, ID Card Software

BadgeMaker Design: How to add a passport photo, signature and a dynamic logo

Written by Margriet SpriensmaTuesday May 25th, 2021

Thank you for choosing the ID card maker BadgeMaker, this post shows you how to use placeholders for dynamic data like an ID photo, signature or a dynamic logo in your card design.

Step 1. Add an ID photo placeholder

To personalize a card, you can add a placeholder for an ID photo, that is automatically linked to the card holders’ ID photo’s in your BadgeMaker Identity project.

Click on the ID Photo tool in BadgeMaker Design and click on the front of the card. Resize the ID photo element to your liking. You can add a border to frame the photo. Go to Element Properties, click on the style tab and change the border thickness.

Step 2. Add a Signature placeholder

A signature placeholder can also be added to your card design. The signature placeholder is also linked to the cardholders’ signatures in your BadgeMaker Identity project. The placeholder shows a dummy signature. Click on the signature tool and then click on frontside of the card. Resize the placeholder to the needed size and drag it to the correct location for your card design.

Add Signature Placeholder in id card maker BadgeMaker

Step 3. Add a Dynamic logo

Click on the Dynamic logo tool in the BadgeMaker Design toolbar, click on the card in the canvas and go to the first tab of the “Element properties”. Select the dynamic field representing the needed data for the dynamic logo.

Keep the aspect ratio and keep the interpolation mode set to default. Now add the dynamic logos, the images need to represent four countries so add four images. Click on the “…” button to select the flag images.

To get the correct flag to appear with the correct card holders’ country, add the associated value. This value needs to be the exact value corresponding with the data in the project. We will add USA, CA, UK and NL.

Do not forget to save the card design. You are now ready to use your card design in BadgeMaker Identity and create a project with card holders.

Thank you for choosing id card maker: BadgeMaker

ID Card Designer Add Static & Dynamic text

BadgeMaker Design, ID Card Software

BadgeMaker Design: How to add static & dynamic text

Written by Margriet SpriensmaTuesday May 4th, 2021

Thank you for choosing the ID Card Designer BadgeMaker, this post explains more about using the text tool and dynamic fields when creating your card design.

After creating the first steps of a card design, like the background and adding a logo it is time to add text to your card design.

You can make use of static text and or dynamic text. When creating a card design that does not contain any personalized data, like for example a gift card, static text can be used. When creating an ID card for your employees, dynamic data is needed for your card design. Typically, Dynamic data will change for every card printed.

In this example we create a design for an employee card, that displays the employee name, function, number and the expiry date of the card. The card design needs to be printed for thirty different employees.

You do not have to design thirty card designs and type in every card holders’ data by hand, we create dynamic fields so we can connect these dynamic fields to a data column that contains thirty names for example.

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Step 1. Add {Dynamic Fields}

Go to the Card design view in BadgeMaker Design and click on the dynamic fields tab, click on the “+” button to add a dynamic field. In this example we create five dynamic fields. Next, we are naming the dynamic fields, so we know which data they represent.

The first dynamic field will represent the “Firstname”, the second the “Lastname”, the third the “Function”, the fourth the “Employee number” and the fifth the “Expiry date”.

ID Card Designer, BadgeMaker Design Dynamic Fields

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Step 2. Add Static Text to your design

Now that we created the dynamic fields, we will use the text tool to add text to the card design. Click on the text tool, then click on the card and go to “Element Properties” to edit the text.

First create the static text labels, in this case “Name:”, “Function:”, “Employee number:” and “Expiry date:”.

ID Card Designer, BadgeMaker Design: Add Static text

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Step 3. Add Dynamic text elements

We also use the text tool for the dynamic text. You can use one text element for static and dynamic text, but for this design we want to give the text labels a different look from the dynamic data. Changing the font size and making the text bold.

Add Dynamic text elements using the dynamic fields, first select firstname from the dynamic field drop down menu and click on the add button. Do the same for the lastname, function, employee number and expiry date. You can recognize a dynamic field by the {braces} on each side of the word.

A nice personalized Card Design using images, shapes, static text and dynamic text created with BadgeMaker Design, the ID Card Designer.

ID Card Designer, Add Dynamic Fields to text

BadgeMaker Design, ID Card Software

BadgeMaker Design Toolbar: Shapes & Images

Written by Margriet SpriensmaTuesday February 16th, 2021

Thank you for choosing BadgeMaker, this post explains more about using the shape and image tool in BadgeMaker Design when creating your card design.

Step 1. First step of your card creation is to choose a background

Open BadgeMaker Design and start a new card design. The next step of creating a card design is to create a background. Choose a blank background or use the shape or image tool to create a background. For the card design in this blog we use an image as background.

Select the Image tool and then click on the card on the canvas. Resize the image-element to cover the card. Now go to the element properties and select an image. Click on the “Select Image” button, select the background image for your card design and click the “Open” button. When your image has the correct size and you do not want the image to stretch, check the aspect ratio box. This will keep the original ratio of the image intact. If you want the same background image on the backside of the card you can copy and paste the image.

BadgeMaker Design, add a background image with the image tool

BadgeMaker Design, select image in Image element properties

Step 2. Add your company logo to the card design

Add a logo image to the front of the card, so the card represents your companies identity. Click the image tool again, click on the card and select your logo image. Do not forget to select the aspect ratio box. Resize the logo to fit the card using the handlers at the corners of the image.

Step 3. Use the shape tool to create a shaped layer

Now use the shape tool to create a lighter area as part of the design. Click on the Shape tool, click on the card and resize the shape element to your liking.

To adjust the color and border go to Element properties and click on the Style tab. Set the border thickness to zero. Click on the background color to select another color or change the transparency of the shape.

We will make this shape slightly transparent and click on ok.

A great start of a card design using shapes and images.

BadgeMaker Design Shape element properties