Artwork and branding for lanyard pouches
Branding a pouch is not complicated, but there are three or four places where a good design becomes a reprint. Here is what to check.
Decide what gets branded: the pouch or the insert
This is the first and cheapest decision. You can print the pouch itself, or leave it clear and print the card that goes inside.
- Branding the insert keeps the pouches generic and reusable across events, and lets you change the design without reordering pouches. Usually the cheaper long-run option.
- Branding the pouch means the branding survives the insert being swapped, which suits staff ID and access control where the card changes but the holder does not.
Plenty of orders do both. If you are not sure which is right, say what the pouches are for and it can be advised on before you commit.
What to send
In rough order of how well it will reproduce:
- Vector artwork — AI, EPS, PDF or SVG. Scales cleanly to any size and gives the sharpest result.
- High-resolution raster — PNG or TIFF, ideally with a transparent background. Usually workable.
- A logo pulled off a website — often too small, but send it anyway. Better to find out now than after production.
Include your brand colours if you have specific references. If you do not know them, that is fine — just say so rather than guessing, because a guessed colour is harder to fix than an unknown one.
The slot strip — the mistake almost everyone makes
Above the lanyard slot there is a strip of material that holds the punch. It is part of the pouch, but it is not printable insert area in any useful sense — artwork that runs into it either disappears behind the seal or gets cut through by the slot itself.
So keep logos, names and anything that has to be readable well clear of the top edge. If your design has a header bar across the top, that is exactly the element most at risk.
Match the artwork to the orientation, not the reverse
Portrait and landscape pouches have the lanyard slot on different edges. Rotating your artwork ninety degrees does not change where the slot is, so a landscape design in a portrait pouch hangs sideways.
Decide how the badge should read when it is hanging on someone, order that orientation, then lay the artwork out to match. The sizing guide covers this in more detail.
Leave a margin
Do not run important content to the very edge of the insert area. A few millimetres of breathing room absorbs the small tolerances in cutting and in how the card sits inside the pouch. Full-bleed backgrounds are fine; full-bleed text is asking for trouble.
Legibility beats cleverness
A badge is read from a metre or two away by someone who is not trying very hard. Practical consequences:
- Names want to be the largest element, not the logo.
- Keep contrast high. Light grey text on white looks refined on screen and is unreadable across a room.
- Remember there is a layer of plastic over the top. Very fine hairlines and small reversed-out type lose definition.
Get it checked
Artwork and pre-production checks are available on request. This is not automatic on every order — you ask for it, and it is arranged. For a first order or any print run, it is worth asking.
A proof or sample can also be produced before you place the order. On a print run, seeing one physical unit answers more questions than any amount of on-screen review.
Send us the file
Attach or describe your artwork with the specification and it will be quoted together with the pouches. If you want it checked first, say so.