name tag protocall

[sal shepherd]

Hi all,

I engraved a name tag for my mother in law , since then the owner wants one for everyone. What is the right font size the first tag had Susan an 36 pt. They have names that have 8 an 9 letters. They don't fit with art work. Do you adjust the font size to fit each badge or do you make them all the same size?

[Dan Hintz]

There's no standard protocol, but most shoot for a font size that captures most average length names and drop the size when names get looooong.

[Scott Shepherd]

I agree with Dan. We start with the longest name and make that fit. Every once in a while you'll get one that's a repeat and it's longer and you'll just have to make it smaller, but we try to make it so 95% of them will all be the same.

[Ron Chapellaz]

Ditto here with Scott...

[Mike Null]

It more or less depends of the size of the name tag and the font your customer wants. I use 18, 20 and 24 point fonts depending on the size of the tag. Even 16 or 14 point sizes are ok depending on the font chosen.

I keep each customers tags consistent with what they ordered first. (same size font for all tags) Name tags make up a good bit of my business so I have customers who have been re-ordering for 10 years. I doubt that more than one in 500 tags requires a smaller font size and those are usually names which have been hyphenated.

I typically submit a proof for new customers and the length of names does not enter my thinking. My solution is to use a second line for a long name.

[sal shepherd]

Thanks everyone, I am going to remake the original tag an drop to 24 pt. so all are uniform.
Thanks Again.

Did the server go down yesterday? I was on line an went to get my son from school an couldn't back on the creek.

[Bill Cunningham]

I do what Scott and the others do. I pick the longest name (within reason of course, or a 7-11 badge might have to be 10" long.:D.) and make them all that size..
Attached Thumbnails

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=91344&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1214358832 (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=91344&d=1214358832)

[Liesl Dexheimer]

Another thing I recommend doing is to choose a typeface that has a condensed version (ex: Helvetica or Arial), especially if you know you will encounter long names. That way when you come across a long name you have another option instead of having to change the size.