Badge Printing

Summary

Align offers badge printing services to your school.

Printing Process
Photo Guidelines
Lead Times
Shipping

Customer Badge Printing Process

If you're an Align Customer, and you've decided to proceed with Align as your school badge supplier, here's what you need to do:

1

Choose Orientation.
You can set the orientation either way - you might have a style you already like - choose horizontal or vertical:

2

Choose to use Student photos or not.
You will need to decide if you want to use student photos on your badge. Using student photos adds a personal element and a layer of security. However, adding photos will add lead time to your school's process as you decide how you will manage collection of photos. Please review the Photos Guidelines for more information. Align can provide additional services for editing of your photos. Please contact us for further information if you need this service.

2

Finalize a design mockup
You can use Align's pre-built basic design, or have your team design your badge. You can use your favorite design program, or hack away in Google docs to provide your preferred design mockup. If you plan to use student photos on your badges, please ensure you've followed the Photo Guidelines and that you've uploaded all photos to Align.

3

Provide your Shipping Address
Please provide Align with your shipping address for where you would like your badges/sample to be sent to.

4

Approve a Printed Sample.
Align will send you a printed sample badge of your design mockup. If you choose this service, please allow for an additional 5 days in your lead time. Align will send you a sample in the mail for you to review and approve for printing. This is the time you would communicate any final badge tweaks!

5

Get your Data Ready: Spell Check!
You will need to check the names of all your students on Align. If you need to make changes, please edit the student information directly in Align. Some students like to use ALL CAPS when applying, and sometimes others choose not to use Capitalisation. Keep in mind that what you see on the Student Portal is what will be printed on your badges.

6

Finalize your List
Within Align, create a Saved View of your students who want to print badges for.

7

Confirm Printing Go Ahead
Send a support request to Align with the URL of your Saved View you've created and we'll get your badges printed.

Photo Guidelines

Photos should be uploaded to Align in a consistent format so that when those photos are used for printing on badges, the photos are clear and correctly sized. There are a couple of ways in which you can manage collecting photos.

Use the student's application Photo
This option allows you to have the badges ready on day #1. However, the downside is that it is rare for students to submit a correctly sized or clear picture of themselves. If you are using student-submitted photos, you may need to download them, edit the photo, and re-upload them to the system prior to confirming the badge print run.
Take photos at registration day
This is a great option to ensure you have a consistent and clear photo for your student records. The downside of this option is that you may have to delay handing out your badges until the second week of school, due to the lead times for badge printing.

If you decide to take photos on registration day, you don't necessarily need a professional photographer (although you may prefer this), just keep these things in mind when taking photos:

Frame the photos so the head size of your subject is the same for every photo you take, and is centered in the frame.
Keep your subjects well lit.
A consistent colored background works well.
Keep track of your student's name/ID number so that you can match them up to their student record in the system.

Lead Times

The following lead times assume that your badge run is less that 500 badges AND you have provided the finalized design mockup.

Badge Printing with Sample for Approval: 10 working days
Badge Printing without Sample: 5 working days

Shipping

As the Customer, you will be responsible for all shipping costs. Align will provide options and costs to you prior to shipping for your approval.