HI All,

Over the xmas 2011 break we were busy updating our example and template pages for plastic cards.

The links below show the new plastic cards examples:

Full colour plastic cards examples

Frosted clear plastic cards examples

Satin black plastic cards examples

Metallic plastic cards examples

White plastic cards examples

Membership cards

Loyalty cards

Key cards

Business cards

Some plastic card examples

We produce plastic cards that have various optional extras.

The picture below is taken from our website which illustrates the various options available.

We are going to update our website shortly to include information about each extra as we have found that customers are often confused on ‘how they work’ often we get ask how a signature strip works.

We hope to make these updates within the next few weeks.

Optional extras available on our full colour plastic cards

It has been my colleagues jobs to look through the order history for our bureau personlisation jobs recently (this is where we print the base artwork onto a full colour solid plastic cards and hold them in stock for customer to call off when new members join).

It is amazing that we have quite a number of customers who have plastic cards in stock yet have not called them off from there stock for over 12 months,

We have decided to politely enquiry as to whether they still need them as unfortunately our storage space is not endless.

If the cards are no longer require we will securely destroy them.

Alternatively if they are still require we will hold them for a further 6 months. If they are not required within this time we will contact the customer again and ask if they requirement them destroying or posting to them.

I do not envy my colleague having this job as it is quite time consuming!

Some plastic card examples

Hello all,

Today has been a quiet day for business cards enquiries however the number of enquiries for membership cards and loyalty cards has been overwhelming. Most interest has been shown in relation to our bureau personalisation service (this is where cards are held in stock for the customer and an excel file is submitted with new members included). In order to provide quote for this service we generally ask customer to clarify the following:

1) How many plastic cards they expect to use over a 12 month period
2) How often they will submit an excel file (weekly, fortnightly or monthly)
3) How many new members details will be within the excel file/how many cards they will call off from their stock each time

I think that because our service is so professional and easy to come to grips with that customers you love the idea of it. Most customer re-new there stock when it is depleted which proves in itself what a good service this is for membership and loyally card schemes.

Our bureau personlisation service is available with the full colour solid plastic cards (760 and 680 microns in thickness). We can offer other optional extras with the cards, such as signature panels. Should you need a price for this product/service, please just complete an online quote request with your requirements  http://fs16.formsite.com/cpcards/form073504030/index.html

If any one has any queries in relation to our bureau personalisation service please let us know and we would be happy to assist.

Bye for now

Some plastic card examples

Hello everyone. Here is my final blog (part three) surrounding magnetic strips and the disadvantages of them, specifically considering the use of them with membership cards and loyalty cards:

The magnetic strips must be in close proximity to the reader to allow it to be read.

If the magnetic strip is placed near to a magnetic field the encoded data can be damaged.

Some people  may consider that as the magnetic strips does not have a human readable element that this may be a disadvantage (please note however with our cards, if we are encoding them for you we can print information on the other side of the cards for you, for example if you want a membership number encoded we can then include a member name on the other side, this can be embossed for a professional image is achieved – just pop the require information in an excel file and we will work directly form this)

At the moment this is al I can come up with any more disadvantages! I am sure there are some more, so as always if you have any let me know and I will update the list!

Some plastic card examples

Here is my second blog on the subject of magnetic strips and specifically the advantages of using them:

Magnetic strips are a well established and well used method of member identification hence there is a lot of information and support available

Due to the availability of products the cost of magnetic strip equipment is relatively cost effective

The data encoded onto the magnetic strip can be rewritten or modified (subject to you having the required equipment to do this)

Magnetic strips are not easily damaged with water or dirt.

The magnetic strips we produce are part of the plastic card and hence do not come off or away from the cards.

There are probably many more advantages but I just wanted to point out some of the mains ones. Hopefully this will be useful if you are considering the implementation of magnetic strips for a loyalty card or membership card. We can obviously incorporate magnetic strips on to any type of card for example some customer like to make their business cards look like credit cards.

Some plastic card examples

This is the start of three blogs surrounding the topic of magnetic strips on plastic cards. The proposed blog topics are:

What are magnetic strips
The advantages of magnetic strips
The disadvantages of magnetic strips

So, here is the first topic – what are magnetic strips:

To start of I think it is important to mention that we offer one product with magnetic strips, this is the full colour solid plastic 760 micron card. Magnetic strips are often used for loyalty and membership schemes and often as business cards to make them look similar to a credit card.

Magnetic strips are usually positioned on the reverse of a plastic cards at the top (there are a few pictures/photos on our website should you wish to view a visual of this).

Magnetic strips are placed on the plastic cards in the form of magnetic tape. There are two different types of magnetic strip tape which we use, they are called High Coercivity (HICO)  or Low Coercivity (LOCO). The Coercivity defines how strong the magnetic field is and how immune the data on the magnetic strip is to damage. This is quite a technical area so I will not dwell on it any further. Most of our customer tend to use a LOCO magnetic strip but if in doubt please check with the company who provided your magnetic strip reader. As a very very rough guide HICO magnetic strips are often black in colour where LOCO ones are brown, please be wary though as this is not always the case. Some magnetic strip readers can read both HICO & LOCO magnetic strips but again if unsure please check with your provider.

The magnetic strip itself has three tracks or lines within it. These tracks are used to record data otherwise known as encoding data. The different tracks can hold different information, this again depends on customer requirements but as a general rule:

Track 1: Alpha numeric (letters & numbers) max characters: 78
Track 2: Numeric max characters: 37
Track 3: Numeric max characters: 103

We can encode on to just one track or multiple tracks if required. Again, If in doubt, as usual, please check with your provider.

We can produce magnetic strips which are encoded or not encoded. The choice is down to individual customers needs. For example some customers ask us to encode a sequential number and they link this number to new members when they join. Other customer have the ability to encode the magnetic strips themselves. Just let us know what you require.

As with any data recoding system you will need a reader (magnetic strip reader in this case) and software to compliment it.

There are vast amounts of information surrounding magnetic strips available on the internet. however I hope that the above provide a basic overview.

As a bit of guidance and summary to this blog, I have put together a few questions regarding magnetic strips, these may be useful to ask customers if you are looking to supply magnetic strip cards / loyalty cards / membership cards for the first time:

1) Do you require a HICO or LOCO magnetic strips?

2) Do you require the magnetic strips to be encoded?

3) If encoding is required, please clarify which track the encoding needs to be on and whether any prefixes are required for your machinery to read/see the magnetic strip.

Hope the above is useful for you.

Some plastic card examples

Here is my second blog in relation to barcodes, this blog is specifically considering the advantages of using barcodes for loyalty and membership cards / schemes. I have just put together a list of advantages and tried to keep them to the concise and to the point:

The barcode hardware is relatively cost effective and hence business friendly in the current economic climate
There are numerous software packages available, you will be hard pressed not to find one which meets your needs.

Barcodes provide accurate identification of members as well as other information (mentioned in a previous blog in more details).

It takes very little time to scan a barcode hence saving time in the long run.
Possibly less chance of failure than other scanning/swiping methods as magnetic charges are not able to disable the actual barcode on the cards.
Our barcodes are positioned behind a plastic laminate e.g. within the plastic card,  which means that will not come off/become scratched over time.

They are easy to identify on the plastic cards for the staff member to scan.
Barcodes are a relatively  easy concept to understand and use.

Its quite easy to set up a barcode scanning system to help streamline a business or loyalty/membership scheme.

Barcode scanners can be portable enabling ease of use -you can take the scanner to the card rather then the other way around – very useful for membership schemes.

Hope these advantages help a little, if anyone has any other advantages please feel free to let us know and any relevant ones will be added to our list.

The final topic on barcodes  - any disadvantages will be posted soon.

Bye for now.

Some plastic card examples

As promised here is my  first blog in relation to barcodes. I will hopefully post three blogs in total regarding barcodes, the first explaining what they are, the second on the advantages and second any disadvantages.

We can offer barcodes on the following products:

Full colour solid plastic cards (760, 680 and 420 microns in thickness) measure 86mm x 54mm
Full colour solid plastic key cards measuring 24 x 54mm

Barcodes are often used for membership and loyalty schemes and help organization’s record important data regarding customers.

Now on to a little more technical information. Barcodes are made up of parallel lines, the barcode is made up of different numbers and/or letters (this is depicted by the customer but generally is a number, the number can be sequential or provided in an excel file from the customer). Please note that other variations of barcodes (such as barcodes hidden within illustrations) do exist however for loyalty cards and membership cards we have found parallel lines to be the most effective and easy to use hence this is the option we offer.

Barcodes are scanned and read by optical scanners otherwise knows as barcode readers, the lines on the cards contain data which a machine can read. The barcode scanner can be handheld or it can be built into a counter like at a supermarket. A software package will usually be present which enables the scanned information/data to be sent to a computer. If for example the barcode is a number, this can be linked to a customer and bring up customers information when it is scanned or it could be a system where points are added each time it is used. The uses of barcodes are vast – too many to mention right now.

Barcodes can be placed on our plastic cards in any location and any size. Please bear in mind not to make the area for the barcode too small as your scanner may have trouble recognizing a very small barcode. Quite often we have found that a white box around the barcode area helps the scanner to identify it as a barcode. Obviously we produce postal proofs for any plastic cards ordered with a barcode, this enables you to test the barcode before we print your full order. We like to ensure our customers have peace of mind.

There are a number of different barcodes types/standards in use, examples include code39, code128A, EAN2, EAN5, CPC Binary,  Telepen & MSI. Some of these barcode types are used for multiple products/organisations others are specific to certain industries or users. For example CPC Binary is used by the post office and Telepen is often used by Libraries. Here at Colour Plastic Cards we produce a number of barcode standards/types (list to follow).

I believe that most barcode scanners can read and scan a variety of standards/barcode types. However as already mentioned we do produce a postal proof (actual finished card) with barcode for testing before we print your full order. If in any doubt please check with the provider of your barcode scanner for the barcode standard you require and any technical information such as optimal size etc.

I hope the information above provides a basic understanding of barcodes and is of a little assistance to you. This blog will be followed by the advantages and disadvantages of barcodes.

Some plastic card examples

We received a phone call today from a customer requiring membership cards, they were a little unsure as to what method to use to actually store customers details on their computer system. Although we do not currently sell these packages we advised the customer that they have a few things to consider namely:

- Did they want to use barcode or magnetic strips (we advised the customer to look at the advantages and disadvantages of both these methods independently and advised that a search of the internet may assist them)
- They will need to purchase both software and hardware (some companies will offer all all in one package or it may be more cost effective to order the items separately)
- The hardware will allow the card to physically be scanned and information transferred to the companies computer system
- The software will enable the data on the customer to be managed e.g. points attached for a loyalty scheme or number of times the member has visited the organization/club.

We hope that providing information such as the above will help customers, as even though we do not currently sell these products, we like to be able to offer advice where we can.

Future blogs on the advantages and disadvantages of bar codes and magnetic strips may be posted (work load permitting). Watch this space!

Some plastic card examples