User guide

24 Card Design
Changing a Card Design
If you make substantial changes to the way you produce cards, review setup
tasks to make sure cards continue to have the quality you require. Substantial
changes can include:
• Change from batch processing to issuing single cards (or change from issuing
single cards to batch processing). Check for differences in K printing and full-
color printing.
• If you print bar codes, test several card produced using your new method to
make sure they are readable on several “live” readers in the system.
• Purchasing a new brand of unprinted cards, which might change the color of
some images.
• Changing to or from pre-printed cards, which might change the color of some
images.
• Moving the ID system to a new location, where environmental changes such
as amount of light or relative humidity can affect images, supplies, or printer
operation.
If you change the design of your cards, or if you start producing an additional
card design, review setup tasks to make sure each design prints as required. You
might identify changes to your process to support printing of two different
designs.
What is an Acceptable Card?
An acceptable card is one that meets the requirements for the card. In other
words, an acceptable card has all card design features printed or encoded
successfully.
If you are setting up the card design and an operator will produce the cards,
provide card quality guidelines to the operators. The guidelines should include
all requirements that the cards must meet, how to evaluate the quality of the card,
and the minimum requirements the card must meet to be issued.
When establishing requirements for a card, consider the following:
• The card is oriented correctly and printed elements are in the correct position.
• The magnetic stripe, bar code, or smart card can be read on more than one
“live” reader in the system.
• Automated fields, such as a field read from a database or inserted by mail
merge, are always produced correctly and do not become corrupted by
typical occurrences (such as when an email server is polled).