Custom Name Badges, Design & Print for 50th High School Reunion, Carol City High

Miami Carol City Senior High School in Florida was holding their 50th Reunion and wanted their name badges to have not only names, including maiden names, but senior pictures from 1969! This was a two part project:

1. Design, layup and data merge of badges
2. Printing the name badges

Designing the name badge was the easy part – just think of it as a single postcard or business card. I got the school colors and fonts from the internet and laid up the card. They wanted the classmate’s picture on each card.

They also wanted to have guest badges along with options for badges for those who did not register in advance (walk-ins). The guest badges were a simple name printed, while the walk-ins had two lines left blank for them to fill in their information. The design was similar, but using a slightly different layout with no photo (obviously)!

The next step was a bit trickier as I had to data merge all the names and images into individual, printable name badges. This required some custom programming in InDesign. Text and names were fairly easy, but merging the pictures were not. You have to ensure each image filename matches exactly how you program the merge, so there was some geekery involved.

With a finished PDF document, we sent the badges to print. We printed them on 100# Card stock to ensure a clean and sturdy finish along with badges with fill-in-the-blank options for guests / spouses!

They came out great! The client loved them and everyone loved having their pictures made available, both on the badges themselves, but also electronically for their own use. Nora Hendrix, one of the organizers, sent us this testimonial about the name badges and the event:

Our 50th Year Reunion was this past weekend and I’m thrilled to report that it was a great success. The Name Badges were so attractive and coveted by classmates that I could barely take a photo of them on the tables as people were finding theirs and snatching them up.