If your event has any media coverage, you’ll need press passes, and you’ll usually need them in a hurry. The approved list tends to land a few days out, sometimes the day before, and then you’re producing credentials for thirty journalists who all turn up at once. Here’s how to make press passes that hold up at the gate, and how to print a whole list of them without losing an evening to it.
What a press pass has to do
A press pass has one job at the door: let security identify the holder and their access level at a glance. So the design should be clear, not clever. The essentials:
- PRESS (or MEDIA), large and unmistakable. A guard shouldn’t have to squint.
- The holder’s name and their outlet or publication
- A photo, for anything with real access control
- The access level or zones: press box, pitch-side, backstage
- The event name and dates
- A QR code or barcode, if you scan people in at the gate
Keep the access information readable from a few feet away. Someone glancing at a lanyard shouldn’t have to read fine print to know where a person is allowed to be.
Size and format
Most press passes are CR80 (credit-card size) on a lanyard, or a larger badge for bigger events. Either works. Settle the size before you design so it prints clean and fits your holders. Lanyard badges around 4 × 6 inches give you more room for a photo and big “PRESS” text, which is why festivals and conferences lean that way.
The part that saves your evening
You rarely make one press pass. You make the whole approved list. So don’t build them one at a time:
- Design one credential: the template, with PRESS, a photo, the outlet, and access fields.
- Put your approved media in a spreadsheet: name, outlet, access level, and the photo filename.
- Generate a personalised pass for every row.
With StencilID the photos are matched by filename. Put j_smith.jpg in a column,
drop the photos in, and each one lands on the right pass, with no hosting and no placing
images by hand. You get a print-ready PDF for the whole batch.
It’s the same workflow as event badges. Here it is running for a conference list, which is the same idea:
Make access levels obvious
If different media get different access, don’t bury it in a line of text. Use a coloured band or a clear label per tier (ALL AREAS, PRESS BOX, PITCH-SIDE), and print the high-access ones in a distinct colour so a guard can sort them without reading. It saves arguments at the gate.
Use the back
Press passes are a good case for double-sided. The front identifies the person; the back can carry the schedule, a venue map, key contacts, or the house rules. It means your media team isn’t asking where everything is every five minutes.
Printing
A card printer for plastic credentials, or a print shop (or office printer) plus a laminate and lanyard for a quick turnaround. Because the list usually arrives late, the bulk-and-print step is the one that matters: you want to go from “final approved list” to “printed stack” in a single pass, not a long night of copy-paste.
If you need a batch this week, the press pass maker is free to start.