Name badges for councils, government and public-facing teams.

A council badges people whose working days have nothing in common: a librarian, a customer services officer at a counter, a building inspector in hi-vis, a parks crew outdoors all day.

The badge design should stay constant. What changes is the fixing and sometimes the backing:

• Counter, library and office staff: magnetic, kinder to issued uniforms and personal clothing.
• Field and outdoor crews: pin clips, more secure on workwear and hi-vis, and nothing to lose on site.
• Elected members and formal roles: gold or silver metal backing where the setting calls for it.

All of that can sit in a single order at a single per-badge price, because every badge is printed individually. Mixing fixings costs nothing extra.

Most public sector badges we print now carry te reo Māori, whether that is a bilingual role title, an organisation name in both languages, or a greeting.

The one thing that genuinely goes wrong is macrons. To avoid it:

• Send text in a file where you can, so the character encoding cannot be lost in transit.
• Convert text to outlines if you supply designed artwork, so nothing shifts if we do not hold your font. Our artwork guidelines explain how.
• Check every macron on the proof. We print exactly what the approved proof shows, so the proof is the moment to catch it.

A bilingual layout needs more room than a single-language one. Our print area is up to 80mm x 30mm on standard backing but only 71mm x 19mm with gold or silver, so stay on standard backing if the text is long.

A public-facing badge is read by the whole public, including people with low vision. It is worth applying the same thinking you would apply to your signage:

• Strong contrast between text and background. Mid-tone text on a mid-tone background fails for a lot of people.
• Generous weight in the typeface. Fine strokes disappear at reading distance.
• Name and role both large enough to read from the other side of a counter, which is further than most badge designs assume.

Our minimum for printed text is 6pt, but 8pt or larger reads far better in practice, and on a public counter we would push for larger still.

Badges are manufactured on our own equipment at 14-20 Downer Street, Lower Hutt, Wellington. Nothing is sent offshore, which matters for two reasons in a public sector context.

First, local content. Where your procurement policy gives weight to New Zealand suppliers or to broader outcomes, this is a genuinely local supply chain rather than a local office reselling imported stock.

Second, lead time certainty. A 5 to 7 working day turnaround from proof approval is a commitment we control, with no shipping variability sitting behind it.

Name Badges is part of Packaging Products Production, the custom manufacturing arm of Packaging Products Ltd, Kiwi owned and operated since 1975.

Alongside named staff badges, most councils need a stock of role-only badges: Contractor, Visitor, Volunteer, Temporary Staff.

Because they carry no name they never go out of date. Order a batch once, hold them at reception, reissue indefinitely. Adding them to a main staff order usually pushes the whole order over a price break, so they can effectively pay for themselves.