Types of ID Name Badges

It always seems a little ridiculous to wear a name badge with your face and maybe your name on your chest but it is often needed for security. Most companies do a great job explaining why they need name badges for employees, visitors or for events. 

Most of you might know name badges like the below from working at - or visiting companies:

But which name badges are really needed for your use-case?

And what do different name badge templates look like more in detail?

In the future we might have an automatic face recognition device, but since we are not there yet we are stuck with paper sticker tags and plastic cards to identify ourselves.

So if you are just starting to look for Name Badge Templates  - here is an overview:

There are different type of name badges:

• Employee ID Name Badges including Access Badges
• Visitor Badges including iPad based visitor systems
• Event Name Badges in the form of paper badges

Below are templates for all these categories.

Depending on the use-case you are looking for, one or the other or all of the name badge make sense. That’s why we assembled a list of name badge templates for your use:

Employee ID Name Badges

There are really different variants of employee badges because of its different functions:

Check in Badges

Mostly ID badges might have the name, your profile picture and some sort of color code to enable the security guard to see which access level you are authorized for. Additionally they might have some barcode or QR code to quickly scan the card at the front desk if it’s not connected to an access control system already. This would mean the setup includes a visitor management system that is authorizing and working on the backend.

• Typically these cards today are produced to be part of the corporate design - e.g. Google or Facebook might use a card design like this:

A more conventional employee Photo ID Badge template can be downloaded here. It looks like this:

Access Badges 

These have the added functionality to unlock the doors and are sometimes worn visibly to function as ID badge as well.

Typically access badges look like ID badges but include RFID or NFC technology to be able to unlock a door. Visibly, there won’t be a difference to a regular ID badge. Typically those cards are provided by companies like Kisi or HID. Depending on the quality of cards they typically are one of three formats:

• Proximity cards (often called “prox card”) are the cheapest and most basic cards. The issue with those is that they can be copied very easily. Read more here.
• RFID cards that include some sort of security - a more advanced security tutorial here and here.
• NFC based smartcards, e.g. MiFare Desfire EV1- there is a lot of security introductions to smartcards, e.g. this here. This is also the standard card Kisi passes are running on.

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Now that we looked at employee badges, let's take a look at visitor badges:

Visitor Badges

Visitor Badges come in different forms as well:

• We found this an interesting solution to quickly enable visitors to access your facility without custom printing labels: Give them a badge that just says “Visitor” so everyone knows they should be on company of someone else. The issue with this approach of course is that you still need the workflow of registering the visitor to know who entered your facility, for example for access control compliance reasons.

• Most companies use an ID label printer and take a quick image of you to print a visitor ID tag for you to wear visibly while walking to your meeting in the space. This might require a more advanced setup including a visitor management software, label printer and picture taking device. Companies like iLobby provide convenient visitor management and recently added iPad and mobile options.

• Recently, iPad-based visitor management systems like Envoy became popular and you take the profile image directly on the iPad and register via the iPad. Your meeting contact will get pinged directly via SMS, and will stop by the front desk to pick you up. That requires no visitor badge necessarily since you are being escorted by an employee. Here is how this looks in practice:

The third category of employee ID name badge templates:

Event Name Badges

These badges are really the simplest form of what you would buy at Staples and you might have seen these event badges at meet-ups. They typically say something like “Hello! My name is….” because they are usually used for networking occasions. You would just use a marker to write your name and company on it so other people can address you properly.

Using Name Badge Templates for Production

Badges can be produced in different ways:

• Printing with a regular office printer in paperformat - It’s best to order templates that you can just print out with your office printer and create the employee badges from here: https://www.globalindustrial.com/p/office-school-supply/labels-and-label-makers/name-badge-labels/name-badge-insert-refills-3-x-4-white-300-inserts-box
• Printing name badge stickers with a thermal ID badge printer from companies like Dymo

• Or using a HID Fargo Printer to customize ID cards and name badges:

ID Badges in Practice - Accessories

• After printing out a name visitor badge you want to give the visitor an option on how to mount this visibly. Mostly needle based mounting is not acceptable, so you are left with either stickers, lanyards or badge holders. 

Here is a quick overview:

• Name badge holders are on the more expensive side equipped with magnets like the one from Uline.

• Visitor Badges come in different forms as well: Some companies use lanyards with specific color on the lanyard so they can identify visitors fast by just looking at what color of lanyard they wear. The question is though - do you need customized visitor badges?