Engineering Design: Taking Card Manufacturing Beyond the Graphics

By Jorge Ojeda, Versatile Card Technology, Inc.

Take a moment to look around the card industry and you will witness the passing of an era. As once early mariners feared to sail past the horizon, so modern day marketers have feared to challenge the orthodoxy of traditional CR80 card design. But today, an intrepid handful of leading payment brands have determined that it is time to see what possibilities lie beyond the protective harbor of ISO 7810. Our first glimpse of this new world has revealed that we are not the first to come this way. And that it was given the name, “industrial design.”

For years, ISO 7810 has been the barrier beyond which no card designer dared venture. But if card designers viewed its creative limitations with frustration, card manufacturers and their suppliers have had a different view. For them, ISO 7810 represented predictability. A predictability that has allowed the card industry to focus its creativity and capital toward maximizing the efficiency of a manufacturing process developed around a product that has not significantly changed in over 20 years.

Today however, the marketing departments of many leading card issuers are determined to create powerful new branding statements by breaking past what has sometimes been referred to as the “ISO barrier.” This trend, which is already well underway, has far reaching implications for anyone involved in the manufacturing of transaction cards for the financial industry.

The trend began with issuers searching for ways to distinguish their card products from the competition and introducing a new generation of lifestyle-oriented products to consumers. The idea is that it is no longer enough just to issue a card—the new goal is to strengthen the brand identity by merging design, value, and convenience into a uniquely engineered product line that services both the consumer and the card issuer.

This kind of “re-invention” of a product that we have come to take for granted is not unique. In many other industries, products have been virtually reinvented in the minds of consumers.

And in those industries, this process has generally come to be referred to as “industrial design” as noted by the Industrial Designers Society of America:

“…the professional service of creating and developing concepts and specifications that optimize the function, value and appearance of products and systems for the mutual benefit of both user and manufacturer.”

One example would be the bicycle, which by virtue of industrial design has been “reinvented” many times.

And this is exactly what you see happening in the card industry as the standard credit card form factor is being re-designed.

Industrial design differs from design in that the scope of coordination required is much wider. It is a profession that incorporates elements of engineering, art and marketing. While concept creation is at the core of industrial design work, it differs from pure design in that its goal is to integrate those concepts into a manufacturing and marketing reality.

Note that the industrial design implies a synergy or cooperation from all those in the value chain—beginning with the creative concept to raw materials, card manufacturing, personalization, and even the card acceptance device. And all this activity coordinates for the purpose of benefiting the issuer and cardholder while still remaining economical to manufacture.

The key difference for the card manufacturer is that past design innovations focused on the challenge of creating a product that fit within the parameters of ISO 7810, which meant that much less coordination was required. Managing this kind of innovation usually involved only a few key employees and perhaps some third party ISO testing.

When innovations completely depart from the traditional CR80/ID1 shape however, we need to have the resources in place to efficiently disseminate information and coordinate inputs from the issuer’s marketing department—through the complete manufacturing, personalization and fulfillment to transaction processing. This requires employees that have a wider understanding of the card business and how the various aspects fit together. The difference in management is that you need employees trained to change their thinking from “what is” to “what could be.” Responses to an issuer’s questions on new product ideas need to change from “no” to “maybe…” and in general a curiosity about what is possible needs to be encouraged in the management team.

Lets take the example of the Visa mini card, which was originally conceived by Bank of America and manufactured by VCT. The concept was introduced to a handful of card manufacturers who were then asked to bid on a project which entailed economically commercializing the manufacturing and personalization of a credit card that was essentially a key tag.

The scope of the project required:

• Identifying new raw materials to strengthen the tag.

• A redesign of the traditional signature panel because of size limitations.

• A redesign of a smaller hologram due to size limitations.

• New card punching techniques to create a tag that could be personalized in a traditional DataCard 9000 environment.

• New personalization variances from Visa to use thermal printing rather than embossing.

• The use of a protective overcoat from DataCard to protect the integrity of the thermal printing of cardholder information.

• Modification of DataCard equipment so that a shorter than normal magnetic stripe could be encoded.

• Modification of DataCard equipment with special transport rails.

• Endless testing and evaluation…

These are just the key items that were actually employed in the final product. In the scope of this article I could not begin to cover the ones that never made it past the drawing table or were ultimately rejected.

The process of “redesigning” the credit card proved much more challenging than we had originally anticipated. The amount of inter-disciplinary input from so many vendors was significant and the project would never have been completed if not for that support. But like most difficult challenges, the successful commercialization of the Visa mini card has proved to be a source of inspiration, confidence and pride for all those who said “maybe” instead of “no.”

It was also financially rewarding. Today the Visa mini card has been adopted by Visa as an internationally accepted form factor and VCT alone has manufactured over 20 million pieces.

But the story of this project does not end here. There are new initiatives underway by VCT and many others to design innovative and stylish ways to attach the Visa mini card to a key ring using plastic, leather, and even stainless steel adornments. Yes, we are actually trying to come up with ways to make credit cards fashion accessories.

This process has introduced us to fabricators and suppliers of raw materials (leather & stainless steel for example) that a few years ago we never would have anticipated.

Card manufacturers are not only facing changing the shape of the card but now, even the way the transaction is being processed. Visa and MasterCard have announced contactless cards. This addition of an IC chip and copper coil antenna presents a significant change in the manufacturing process. And this innovation is likely to be combined with others. For example, we have already been testing the use of the mini card (and other shapes) in conjunction with this new contactless technology. One day you may wake up to find a news item announcing that some issuer has launched a Visa mini card with a contactless IC chip embedded into it.

The Visa mini card is not the only successful story of a card that departs from tradition. To declare a trend, we need a few more examples. Here are just a few of the most popular:

• American Express Blue Card: A translucent card with a colored magnetic stripe, printed repeating logo and an embedded IC chip with a palladium module.

• Discover 2Go Card: A key tag card that folds into a plastic holder like a pocketknife.

• MC2 Card: MasterCard’s vision of the modern transaction card is usually translucent, has an IC chip embedded and one corner radius that has been broadened dramatically to draw out the MasterCard double globe logo.

• MasterCard Sidecard: Continues the MC2 theme in a key tag sized form factor.

The success of projects like these ensure that card manufacturers are going to have to adapt. Card issuers are looking to create a dynamic, exciting brand by having a dynamic exciting form factor, and card manufacturers similarly have to do the same or risk losing their key accounts.

This will require card manufacturers used to the predictability of standards to adapt to a model that also capitalizes on the demand for innovation.

One starting point is to consider adding new skill sets to the staff. And filling the role of industrial designer would be a logical first step. This position needs a working knowledge in a variety of areas from production and assembly, marketing strategies, visual perception, product graphics, ergonomics, product development, market research, interaction logics, layout and composition, production materials, and current and future trends.

You’ll want somebody with the creative ability to reach past the boundaries of custom and practice —without losing sight that this is a manufacturing facility and not a design studio. Somebody who can translate the customer needs into a plan and establish a team approach that not only includes professionals within the company but also draws from suppliers, the issuer, and the payment brands.

This person has to be able to take design past the skills of a graphic artist: a person who can walk into a production line and successfully interact with highly qualified and experienced employees whose first response to a completely new idea may be, “No! It’s not ISO 7810. It will disrupt our process, and we don’t want to mess with this.”

But skills are only part of the story. The fundamental change has to be in the management and culture of the company to allow for this kind of innovation. And there needs to be a structure within which new projects that require inter-disciplinary input are initiated.

In most companies, however, a new project would begin with a request from the sales department to someone in production. But if new projects are expected to begin with sales people going to the production manager in the middle of a busy, deadline-filled day, to ask if a pocket-knife shaped card could be made, you may find that the project is not likely to get off the ground. Such far-reaching ideas involving a wide scope of expertise cannot realistically be evaluated while juggling phone calls and signing purchase orders.

Conceptualizing and proofing these new product ideas need to be reviewed as well. Manufacturers are going to need to expand their notion of proofing to include conceptualizing. For this to work, designers need to be considered an integral part of the team—not as illustrators.

The capabilities of the typical pre-press department may need to be expanded. Today’s projects often cannot be effectively represented with a typical two-dimensional proof. Without 3-D modeling for example, how would you propose to effectively show a customer what a multi-layer, translucent, folding key tag with reverse printing is going to look like?

If the past can teach us anything about innovation, we can be sure that many new products (and patents) will result from the combination of unrelated innovations. New card products will often be the result of combinations of innovations which when employed together, form a new product altogether.

This is why the management of information is so important. For many in the industry, phone calls and visits from vendors are a primary source of new information. This means that the representatives of those companies —the ones who are responsible for exposing you to their latest developments—need a wider access to your company beyond the usual interactions with purchasing, print or production managers.

It is surprising how often a supplier will send someone with decades of experience to visit a company and not be introduced to anyone other than those immediately involved in the purchasing decision. This is a terrible waste of an important resource—that is free!

Lately it seems that every day there are innovations being made by raw material and equipment manufacturers, sometimes without realizing the impact that they may have on the card industry. With companies like 3M, Dupont, ABNH, and a score of others, the creative mind is sure to find synergistic combinations that could result in the next hot product for transaction cards. Trade shows have traditionally been the primary way that the latest innovations are introduced. Unfortunately, trade shows are not being used as the resource they could be. Many companies limit participation to the exact employees for whom the show is immediately relevant. With the need for inter-disciplinary teamwork becoming a requirement, perhaps now is the time to send the production manager to a printing show and the sales person to a manufacturing equipment show. While the ROI may be hard to quantify at first, perhaps you will find that your most profitable project next year could be the unlikely result of a suggestion from someone in the pre-press department that was based on what they saw at a trade show last year that had nothing to do with graphics!

Given the success of projects that completely redefine the way we think of the magnetic stripe card, and the speed at which issuers are looking to exploit these new branding opportunities, as card manufacturers we can no longer depend on the stability of the ISO 7810. For good or bad, it is up to us now to adapt to completely new expectations and opportunities.

Jorge Ojeda is a graphic designer from Caracas, Venezuela. He graduated from the Jose Maria Vargas University with a degree in graphic arts. Mr. Ojeda has been a plastic card designer for over 13 years and his experience includes working for Brazilian and Venezuelan manufacturers before he moved to the U.S. to work for VCT. Ojeda’s designs received four American Graphic Awards in 2004. He is the winner of the 2004 ICMA Design Competition and one of his cards was a finalist of the 2004 Élan Awards in the “best non-financial card” category. He has given numerous lectures on plastic card design throughout his career in English, Spanish, and Portuguese languages.