ID & Badge Card Maker

How our ID card maker works

Most people who need ID cards need more than one. A school makes a card for every student, a company for every new hire, an event for every guest. Our ID card maker is designed around that. You set up the look once, add your people, and the maker lays out every card the same way, so you can spend your time on the list instead of on the layout.

1. You choose a card type

There are six card types, and each has its own layout and labels. Employee and Student cards show a photo, name, title or grade, ID number and dates. Membership cards put the member level first and the photo is optional. Event badges use a big name and a bold role band, made to be read across a room. Visitor passes show who the visitor is meeting and when the pass expires. Access passes show a clearance level and a list of areas. You can mix all six types in one batch.

2. You set up groups

A group is a color identity, such as a department, a role (Staff, Contractor, Volunteer), a grade or an access level. You can name up to six, give each two colors and a symbol, and every card picks one. The group color frames the card and its name prints as a band along the bottom, so people can tell groups apart at a glance.

3. You fill in the card

Each card has a full name, a job title, grade or role, a department, class, company or host, an ID number, an issued date and a valid-until date. There is also a notes box for lines such as access areas. Type {key} or {2} in the notes and the maker draws an icon or a numbered circle in the line. There are 14 icons, including key, lock, shield, book, cap, star, globe and ticket. Put a word between asterisks to make it bold. Text shrinks to fit, and the maker leaves out fields you do not fill in. It has no field for date of birth or home address, on purpose.

4. You add a photo

Upload a picture, take one with your phone, choose one from the Media Library when you are signed in, or paste an image address. Drag it to position it and pinch to zoom. If a card has no photo yet, a silhouette fills the space, which is handy while you collect pictures. Adding a logo puts it in the header and on the back of every card.

5. You add a barcode or QR code

Choose a Code 128 barcode or a QR code, and put it on the front, the back or both. By default the code holds the card’s ID number, and you can give any card its own value. If you have an ID number but no code value, nothing else is needed. A code on the back keeps the front clean, which is how most ID cards are laid out.

6. You set ID numbers and copies

Give a prefix such as EMP- and the maker numbers every card that has no number of its own, like EMP-0001, EMP-0002 and so on. Each card also has a “copies to print” number, which is useful for spare badges. When you print, the maker repeats each card the right number of times, or you can turn that off.

Check your batch before you print it

Under the card gallery, the batch tools show how many different cards you have, how many will be printed counting copies, and how many have a photo. Two charts show cards by type and cards by group.

The checks list is the part that saves paper. It looks through the whole batch and tells you about cards with no name, ID numbers that are used twice, cards whose type shows a photo but have none yet, notes or back text that do not fully fit, very long names that get cut off, cards with nothing to put in the barcode or QR code, and barcodes that are too dense to scan reliably on a small card. Fix what it lists, and print only then.

The random sample button shows six cards picked from the batch, which is a quick way to spot-check a long list without scrolling through all of it.

The maker does not know who works for you, who is enrolled or who is allowed into which room. It checks that the cards are consistent and will fit on paper. Whether the information is correct is up to you.

Make many cards from a spreadsheet

The Import tab lets you download a CSV template, fill in your whole list in a spreadsheet (names, types, groups, titles, ID numbers, dates, notes, copies and more), and import it. You can replace the current cards or add to them, and export the batch back to CSV at any time. Many people keep the spreadsheet as the master copy and use the maker to see and print it.

Add photos in bulk. Choose many photo files at once. Name each file after the person’s ID number or full name, for example 0042.jpg or alex-morgan.jpg, and the maker attaches it to the matching card. It tells you how many photos matched and lists any file names that did not.

A tip for spreadsheets: programs such as Excel remove leading zeros from numbers, so 0042 becomes 42. Format the ID column as text before you type or paste. To protect you, the maker also marks any cell that starts with =, +, – or @ when it exports, so a spreadsheet does not run it as a formula.

Sizes, styles and double-sided cards

Choose from six sizes: ID card landscape (3.375 × 2.125 in), ID card portrait (2.125 × 3.375 in), badge landscape (4 × 3 in), badge portrait (3 × 4 in), A6 badge (4.13 × 5.83 in) and name tag (3.5 × 2.25 in). Layouts change to suit the shape, so a portrait lanyard badge is not just a stretched landscape card.

Four styles change the whole look: Corporate with a white card and a color header band, Modern with a bold color frame and a round photo, Tech with dark panels and neon lines, and Friendly with chunky outlines and rounded type. If you plan to punch a hole for a lanyard, turn on the slot guide and the layout leaves room for it.

The batch has one shared back with a title, text such as “If found, please return to…”, and your logo or a symbol. If a card needs its own back, for example a line of emergency contact details, fill in that card’s back title and text. A barcode or QR code on the back is always specific to the card.

Printing your cards

• Home printing sheets: cards at actual size on Letter or A4. The maker works out how many fit on each page for your card size, adds cut guides, and can print the backs mirrored so they line up when you print double-sided and flip on the long edge.
• Print-ready PDF: one card per page at the exact card size, repeated by the number of copies, with an optional 0.125 inch bleed. The colors at the edge of the card are extended into the bleed so there is no white edge after cutting. This is the file to send to a print shop. Check their own size and bleed rules first, since they differ.
• Images: PNG or JPG at 150, 300 or 600 DPI with the resolution embedded, one card at a time or as a ZIP with each file named after the card’s ID number. This is what most card printers take as input. Check your printer’s driver for the exact image size it wants.

Print one test sheet before a full run, to see how your printer lines up the two sides. Print a few cards with codes, and scan them with the scanner or phone you will really use, because a code that looks fine on screen can still fail on cheap paper. Colors are shown in RGB, so printed colors can look a little different.

Tips for designing readable ID cards and badges

• Make the name the biggest thing. Someone across a table should be able to read it. Event badges are made this way.
• Use group colors for sorting. A color that always means “contractor” or “grade 10” lets people check a card without reading it.
• Use a plain, well-lit photo. Same background, same distance, face centered. It looks better on the card and makes the card more useful.
• Keep the back useful. Say who to return a lost card to. That is the most common reason a card is ever turned over.
• Keep codes short. A short ID makes a barcode with wide bars that scans easily. For longer values, use a QR code.
• Put an end date on temporary cards. Visitor and event badges should say when they expire.
• Test a printed code. Scan one real card before you print two hundred.

A note on responsible use

This tool makes cards for organizations: workplaces, schools, clubs and events. It does not make government-issued identification. Please do not use it for driver’s licences, passports, age verification or to pretend to be someone else, and only put photos of people on cards if they agreed. A barcode or QR code on a card is just a picture of its value. It is not encrypted or signed, and anyone can copy it, so do not rely on it alone to protect a door.

About this ID & badge card maker

What we store, and for how long

ID cards hold people’s names and photos, so here is exactly what happens to them.

• If you only design and download: your cards stay in your browser and are not saved on our server.
• If you save a batch: the card text, settings and image addresses are stored under a random public link. You are asked to confirm first. Guest batches are removed automatically after [90] days without changes. Batches owned by logged-in users are kept.
• Your photos: a photo from your device, including photos added in bulk, is not stored on the server unless you are signed in and it is saved to the Media Library. Otherwise it works on your screen and in your downloads, but is left out of a saved batch. Large numbers of device photos are not uploaded automatically.
• In your browser: the key that lets you edit a saved batch is kept in your browser’s local storage on your device.

Anyone with a public link can view and print a batch, so do not save a batch with real people’s details in it if that is a problem. Keep the CSV file instead. Shared batch pages are set not to appear in search results.

Honest limits

A batch can have up to [200] different cards. Layouts are fixed for each card type, so there is no free-form layout editor, and each batch has one style and one size. Images from other websites can show on screen, but they only go into downloads if that website allows it, so use images from your device or your own site. The tool does not write to card chips, magnetic stripes or door systems, and it does not check who should have a card. Barcodes use letters, numbers and common symbols, and a printed code should always be test-scanned. We would rather you know that now than discover it at the front desk.