User Manual

Setting up for your card design 1
SP35 Info Central
Setting up for your card design
The driver provides settings that you can use to make sure that your cards print as you intend. These
settings provide users of the printer with great flexibility in printing, encoding a magnetic stripe, or
personalizing a smart card. This flexibility makes it very difficult to provide you with a step-by-step process
for getting your cards to print as you intend. Instead, Datacard recommends that you do one of the
following:
•
Work with your value-added reseller or dealer to design cards and set up the printer to produce them
•
Understand the features of your card design, read information in this section to match features to
printer settings, and change the settings to produce the cards.
How do I create a card design?
• Datacard’s ID Works and Preface applications are designed to capture, format, and manage
the data the often appears on cards. (Other applications can use the SmartDriver API or other
driver features to handle card-specific data.)
• A PC application that can be used for many purposes, such as Word, Excel, or PaintShopPro,
can be used to create a card design and format the data for the cards.
• This section focuses on the settings, not the application you use. When the application has an
affect on the driver settings, this section will include that information.
What is a card design?
• Card design is the name given to the combined features of the cards you produce. Cards are
useful only when all cards contain the same information: Name, photo, and so on.
• The card design includes the different types of data (name, ID number, and so on), images
(logo, photo, and so on), and special features such as barcode, magnetic stripe, or smart card
on the card.
• Card design also includes the way those components are arranged.
• Finally, card design frequently includes quality guidelines. For example, an organization might
print their logo in red, however another organization might require a specific shade of red for
the logo.
• An organization might have more than one card design. For example, a health club is likely to
produce member cards and employee cards.
When should I perform setup tasks?
• Initial setup: When you obtain the printer and have the card design complete, perform setup
tasks to get the printer to produce the cards you want.
• Production changes: If you make substantial changes to the way you produce cards, review
setup tasks to make sure cards continue to have the quality you require. For example, if you
purchase a new brand of (unprinted) cards, you might notice changes in the color of some
images.
• New card design: If you change the design of your cards, or if you start producing an
additional card design, review setup tasks to make sure each design prints as required. You
might identify changes to your process to support printing of two different designs.