A good employee ID card does three jobs at once: it identifies your staff, controls access to your building, and quietly reinforces your brand every time someone wears it. The good news is you don’t need a designer or special software to make them. Here is a clear, step-by-step way to create staff ID cards, whether you need one for a new hire or a few hundred for the whole company.
What goes on a good employee ID card
Before you design anything, know what belongs on the card. A clean corporate ID usually has:
- Company logo and a band in your brand color
- A photo of the employee
- Full name (the largest text on the card)
- Role / job title and department
- A unique employee ID number
- A QR code or barcode for access control or verification
- Optionally an issue/expiry date
Keep it uncluttered, a card that tries to show everything ends up hard to read at a glance, which defeats the point.
Step 1. Start at the right size
ID cards have a standard size: CR80 (85.6 × 54 mm), the same as a credit card, so they fit every badge holder, lanyard and card printer. Don’t design at a random size, start from a CR80 canvas so what you make is exactly what prints. (More on dimensions in our ID card size guide.)
The fastest start is a ready-made template. Open the employee ID card maker or browse the template gallery and pick a corporate design, it already has the size, fields and a sensible layout.
Step 2. Add your branding
Swap in your logo, set the header to your brand color, and choose a font that matches your company’s style. Consistency matters: every staff card should look like it came from the same place. Save these once and reuse them for every card.
Step 3. Add the photo and details
Drop in the employee’s photo and fill in the name, role, department and ID number. A few photo tips that make a big difference:
- Use a plain background and even lighting
- Frame head and shoulders, centered
- Keep all photos the same crop so the batch looks uniform
Step 4. Add a QR code or barcode
If your cards double as access passes, add a QR code (or barcode) that encodes the employee ID or a verification URL. Security can scan it at the door, and it makes the card much harder to fake than text alone.
Step 5. Make it double-sided (optional)
Many companies put extra information on the back: a magnetic-stripe area, a barcode, an “if found, return to…” notice, emergency contact details, or terms of use. A double-sided card keeps the front clean while still carrying everything you need.
Step 6. One card, or the whole company?
This is where doing it by hand falls apart. If you have a list of 50 or 500 employees, you don’t want to edit the card 500 times. Instead:
- Design one card (your template).
- Put your staff in a spreadsheet: a column for name, role, ID, and the photo filename.
- Upload the CSV, map each column to a field on the card, and add the photo files.
- Generate, and get a personalised card for every row at once.
Photos are matched by filename (e.g. a photo column with alice.jpg), so there’s no
hosting or manual copy-paste. See the
bulk ID card maker for the full flow.
Step 7. Print or export
You get a high-resolution PNG for a single card, or a ZIP plus a multi-card PDF with cut lines for a batch. Send the PDF to an office printer, a card printer, or a local print shop, then trim along the lines. Double-sided cards are laid out so each back lines up behind its front for duplex printing.
A few tips for great staff cards
- Standardise the photo style across the company, it looks far more professional.
- Keep the design simple: name big, everything else secondary.
- Plan for re-issues: keep your spreadsheet so reprinting a lost card is one click.
- Test one print before running the whole batch.
That’s the whole process. Design once, generate as many as you need, and print, start free and make your first employee card in a few minutes.