Name badges for schools, kura and early learning centres.

The audience for a school badge is a parent approaching at the gate, often in a hurry, often at four metres rather than one. That is a much longer reading distance than an office badge is designed for.

• Set the first name large. It is the thing people need.
• Keep the role short. Kaiako, Teacher, Reliever, Office, Principal. Long titles shrink the whole badge.
• Use a sans-serif face with real weight. Fine serifs disappear at distance.
• Go for contrast. White or black on a strong background beats a mid-tone on a mid-tone every time.

Our print area is up to 80mm x 30mm, which is enough for a genuinely large first name plus a short role.

Plenty of the badges we print for schools and kura carry te reo Māori, whether that is a role such as Kaiako or Tumuaki, a greeting, or a bilingual layout.

Two practical points:

• Macrons must be right. Send the text in a file rather than typing it where the encoding might be lost, and check every macron on the proof. We will print exactly what the approved proof shows.
• Convert text to outlines if you are supplying a designed file, so the macrons cannot shift if we do not hold your font. Our artwork guidelines explain how.

If a bilingual layout is getting cramped, tell us. Rebalancing it is part of the artwork check, not an extra charge.

Every school has the same problem: relievers change constantly, and printing a personalised badge for someone covering two days does not make sense.

The usual answer is a small set of role-only badges with no name at all. Reliever, Visitor, Parent Help, Contractor. Order 10 or 20 of them once, keep them at the office, and hand them out as needed.

Because they carry no name, they never go out of date, and ordering them alongside your named staff badges gets the whole order over a price break. At 10 badges the per-badge price drops to $10.00 and setup becomes free, so adding reliever badges to a staff order often costs less than ordering the staff badges alone.

Most schools order in January for the start of the year, which is the right approach and gets you the best price. A few things worth doing while you are at it:

• Order a buffer. Five or ten spare role-only badges cover mid-year starters without a new order.
• Get to the next price break. The steps are at 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 badges. If you are at 45, check what 50 costs.
• Ask for a free sample if you are ordering 20 or more, and get the board or your senior leadership to sign off something physical.

Reorders during the year never pay setup again where only the name changes, so a single badge in June costs the badge and the shipping.