Posted By
Lucy Wenham
2490 View(s)
Published 01 February 2016
Last Updated 13 May 2025
Moulton College is one of the top colleges in the country, and a Centre of Excellence for Education and Training for the Natural, Built and Recreational Environment.
A multi campus college, Moulton College is split across 5 sites and offers students a variety of learning options and courses.
The Brief
We were approached by Moulton College during the Summer holidays to quote for producing around 3000 student ID cards for the new students starting in September 2015.
In addition to being used to identify the students by way of a photo, the cards also needed to contain course information and a unique bar code and serial number. Finally, the cards needed to be compatible with the college’s existing Access Control system for building and facility entry and the Print & Copy release system for using the college printers and photocopiers.
The cards needed to have a generic design, incorporating the college logo on the front and important details on the rear including safeguarding information, numbers to call in case of absence and details of how to access the college’s IT system.
The college also needed to be able to print new and replacement cards throughout the year.
Due to the date of admissions closing and on site enrolment commencing, the college would be able to provide us with the data to be printed just three days prior to the cards being needed on site for the start of enrolment.
The Solution
The card type selected was a 1k MIFARE card, this could hold enough data to be encoded to ensure compatibility with the college’s systems. As part of the bureau service, we captured the unique chip serial number of each card and logged this in a database for the college to then match with their systems – giving each student the correct access and printing privileges.
For the card printing, due to the quantities involved, we recommended a litho print process for the base design on the front and the rear of the cards. Litho printing gives the most superior print quality, over the edge printing and is extremely cost effective on quantities over 1000 cards.
We then worked with the college on a design that incorporated all of the informational elements that needed to be included on the card including the student’s name, campus, course code, validity dates, pass print date and unique barcode and serial numbers.
Variable pictorial elements included the student’s photo, and symbols to identity the student type, if they were under 18 and if they were eligible for free meals.
We set multiple printers running in our on-site card production bureau and as soon as the cards were printed they were batched by site, course code, course name and student surname to further assist the staff on site. All cards were then delivered to the correct campus’ ready for students arriving.
The Result
All cards were printed to a high quality and delivered to the correct campus with chip serial numbers provided back to the college for seamless integration with their systems, in time for the first students arriving on site for the start of the year.
Our client at Moulton College was extremely pleased with the service we provided:
“We used ID Card Centre for bureau printing of nearly 3000 student id cards, they met our requirements including some very tight turn arounds from data submission. They exceeded expectations with the highest level of customer service and organisation of the printed cards. I will be using them again and have already recommended to a colleague who deals with buspasses.”
We are now delighted to also take care of the college’s personalised lanyards, bus passes and staff cards for ID, access control and print and copy release.
For more information on our bureau service or to talk to us about your specific requirements please contact us
Email [email protected] Phone 01604 422422
