ID Card Printers

Membership Cards

Overview

Introduction
Membership cards have been around for some time now in many forms from simple paper card to full laminated card. With increasing card printer technology it is now possible to produce a card in small quantities yet have the quality of screen printing at a fraction of cost.

The main purpose of a membership card is to contain the member’s details. This can be done by either a barcode or a magnetic stripe. A barcode on the card is normally sufficient as it is only the membership id number that is needed to tally to the database. The magnetic stripe offers more information to be retained i.e. address of the member although this then could prove to be a security issue if the card is lost and the data is used illegally.


What should I put on my Membership Card?
Depending on the design of the card it is possible to get the majority of the design pre-printed and then use a printer such as the Zebra P110i card printer to over print in mono or full colour the additional information on either the front or back of the membership card. This solution reduces printing costs and allows the user more flexibility.

When designing your card the first thing is to decide if you will print the whole design or get them pre-printed. Once they are pre-printed, there’s no turning back with design layout unless you give yourself some room on the card to move things about. Next is the decision to include a photo ID or not. Most memberships i.e. video clubs, library cards etc do not need to be that secure where as gym cards, sports clubs etc need to be more rigid in their security.

Font size and colour is important as the membership name needs to be clearly visible by staff enabling quick transactions to take place. Barcodes need to be in black on a white background and to be a reasonable size on the card to give most barcodes the optimum chance of scanning.

Which card printer should I choose?
There’s many factors that decide which card printer you need to produce your membership cards. DED have a varied selection of card printers for any type of card printing. The P110m card printer is ideal for overprinting in monochrome for small runs of cards. The P110i offers full colour printing and is also ideal for smaller runs. Both printers can be fitted with magnetic card encoders for higher security applications. For information about encoding, please look out our magnetic encoding guide.

Summary

For further card printer information please click here for our complete listing or alternatively call 01797 320636 and our card sales team will gladly go through our product range.