Card design

Templates, the editor, and why what you approve on screen is what the printer produces.

Templates and versions

A template is one card design: a front, an optional back, and the rules for what data appears where. Every organisation starts with a library of five, one for each card holder type, drawn in its own brand colours. They are ordinary templates, so change or replace them freely.

Saving in the editor never overwrites anything. Each save creates a new version, and earlier versions stay exactly as they were. Once a version has been used by a submitted order it is locked: a card reprinted from that order in two years will look exactly as it did the day it was approved, whatever the design has become since. The template’s current version is what new cards use, and you can point it back at any earlier version from the template page.

The Card for setting assigns the template to a holder type (students, staff, contractors, visitors, access holders). That is how the portal picks the right artwork when a card is requested. A template with no assignment issues nothing, which is the difference between a draft and a card in use. The thumbnail on the templates list is redrawn on every save, by the same renderer that prints.

The editor

Everything is placed in millimetres on a standard ID card (CR-80, 85.6 × 53.98 mm), so a design renders the same on screen, at 300 dpi on the printer, and at 600 dpi on a proof. Front and back are separate sides. The panel on the left lists elements in stacking order; the panel on the right edits the selected element. Dragging snaps to guides at the card’s centre and other elements’ edges.

Three boundaries matter, and the editor draws all of them:

• Bleed (1 mm). Background colour and full-bleed shapes should run past the card edge, so a slight misfeed shows artwork rather than a white sliver. Design to the edge and beyond it.
• Safe margin (2 mm). Text closer than 2 mm to the edge risks being cut by normal card-cutting tolerance. The warnings panel flags it.
• Keep-out zones. Turn on magnetic stripe and the stripe area is shaded on the back (5.54 mm from the top, 12.7 mm tall); turn on smart chip and the contact plate is shaded on the front. Anything over them is hidden under the stripe or smeared by the encoder, so the editor warns.

Elements and data on the card

Six element types: text, photo (the holder’s approved photo, one per front), image (uploaded artwork such as a logo or crest; PNG, JPEG or WebP up to 10 MB), shape (rectangle, ellipse, line), barcode (Code 128 or Code 39) and QR.

Text and barcode values can hold placeholders in double braces, filled in for each card when it is drawn:

Placeholder	Fills in
{{firstName}}, {{lastName}}, {{fullName}}	The holder’s names
{{preferredName}}, {{displayName}}	The preferred name; the display name falls back to the first name
{{externalId}}	The student or staff number
{{department}}, {{campus}}, {{holderType}}, {{email}}	From the holder’s record
{{expiryDate}}, {{issueDate}}	The card’s dates
{{serialNumber}}, {{verificationCode}}	The card’s serial number and public verification code
{{companyName}}	Your organisation’s name
{{custom.yearLevel}}	Any custom field on the holder’s record, by its name

A placeholder that matches nothing prints as nothing, not as its braces.

Text shrinks to fit by default rather than overflowing, so a long surname gets smaller instead of being cut off. The default QR code holds {{verificationCode}}, and the default barcode holds {{externalId}}, the number your other systems already scan.

Warnings

The warnings panel under the canvas checks the design as you work. It flags elements past the card edge (they will be cut off), text inside the 2 mm safe margin, text under 6 pt (not reliably readable at 300 dpi), barcodes under 6 mm tall (they scan badly on worn cards), QR codes under 12 mm (hard for phone cameras), an image element with nothing uploaded, a missing photo, and a double-sided template with an empty back. Warnings are advice, and you can save anyway, but each exists because a real card came out wrong.

Preview, and what actually prints

Print preview draws both sides at 300 dpi with sample details, using the same renderer that produces the production artwork, not a browser imitation. What the preview shows is what the printer lays down. The canvas is for arranging; the preview is for approving.

Fonts match on purpose

The editor and the renderer measure text with the same typeface, so a line that fits on screen fits on the card. If a design was made before a platform update that mentions fonts, check the preview again afterwards.

Keyboard shortcuts

Keys	Action
Arrow keys	Move the selected element 0.5 mm; hold Shift for 2 mm
Delete or Backspace	Delete the selected element
Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y	Undo, redo
Ctrl+D	Duplicate the selected element
Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V	Copy and paste elements, including between front and back
Ctrl+A	Select every element on the current side
[ and ]	Move the selected element down or up the stacking order
+ and -	Zoom the canvas
Esc	Clear the selection

On a Mac, Cmd works wherever Ctrl is listed.

Where designs go next

Once a template is assigned to a holder type, it is used automatically: orders draw each card from the version that was current when the order was submitted, walk-up printing uses the same artwork at the desk, and the print queue delivers it to the printer. Digital ID wallet passes are designed separately, under Wallet templates, because a phone pass has its own layout rules; see Digital IDs.