Student Identification: Student IDs Made Easy
Full-color photo ID cards for faculty, staff, and students help identify those who are supposed to be on campus – and those who are not. But, how do you provide durable, great-looking photo ID cards on the spot at an affordable price?
Len Conrad School Photography, a leading school photography studio based in Campbell, California, faced this challenge three years ago, when the demand for instant school ID cards exploded.
For more than 40 years, Len Conrad School Photography has been photographing more than 150,000 students annually in more than 200 schools. Most of these schools never felt the need for durable student ID cards, but with increasing security concerns, identifying students became a priority.
“In 2007, we decided to offer instant plastic ID cards to our schools,” said Benjamin Lam, vice president of technology at Len Conrad School Photography. “Our objective since then has always been to provide schools with durable and attractive instant ID cards.”
The process used is pretty straight-forward. On picture day, all students and staff are photographed, and a photo ID card for each one is printed on the spot.
To do so, Len Conrad School Photography uses an ID card system that includes a digital camera, a laptop, an on-site camera capture software (CamLynx by PhotoLynx), and an Evolis Dualys ID card printer.
The design of the cards is pre-approved by the school, and student information is pre-loaded into CamLynx, which allows Len Conrad School Photography to have the ID templates prepared and ready before picture day.
Then, each picture taken by the photographer is inserted into the pre-designed template through Camlynx, and the student ID gets printed a few seconds later.
Len Conrad School Photography purchased their ID card systems from TransTech Systems, a leading provider of ID solutions based in Oregon.
“We spent time searching for the right offer at the right price” said Lam. “We found TransTech Systems online, and the deal that we got was exactly what we were looking for.”
An important piece of the ID system is the card printer, and, when hundreds of cards need to be printed on demand, there is no room for mistakes.
“We needed extremely reliable printers at a reasonable cost.” said Lam. “TransTech Systems recommended the Evolis card printers based on our need for reliability, ease of use, and affordability.”
TransTech Systems is a value-added, stocking distributor of ID Badging Systems, Secure Identification products, Physical & Logical Access Control products, Smart Cards, Smart Card readers/encoders, and Visitor Management Systems, www.ttsys.com.
“Evolis is one of our fastest-growing product lines” said Kristin Byrne, dealer sales manager for TransTech Systems. “They hold up under high-volume use, and that is a requirement for professional student ID systems.”
The Evolis Dualys3 is a dual-sided color ID card printer that comes with a three-year warranty, www.evolis.com. Fast (125 color cards an hour) and powerful, Dualys3 guaranteed that the printing process would keep moving.
Len Conrad School Photography handles the entire instant ID process on picture days, which makes the experience stress-free for schools.
Furthermore, it provides schools with a unique loaner program: all year long, schools get a complete system – an Evolis ID card printer and an ID software developed by TransTech Systems, EZBadge – to print school IDs for new students or replace lost IDs.
“Not only do we provide our customers with instant student IDs, but we also offer peace of mind to our schools.” said Lam. “We offer full customer service, so we are always ready to assist our schools with any technical support that they may need with their loaner ID systems.”
Len Conrad School Photography has already printed more than 500,000 ID cards. In the education market, high-volume printing of instant photo IDs is still for early adopters. With results like these, that could change soon.
