I’ve told you about our Shifting Marketing Focus to Attract Local Business which included joining the Carefree/Cave Creek Chamber of Commerce. As part of this effort, I’ve been attending a number of networking events so I can talk to other local business people in person. Of course I made myself a nice name badge (see below) to wear and often get asked about it.

I also have the name badge prepared for me by the Chamber of Commerce. It looks nice, but not nearly as nice as my custom name badge. I love it when someone asks me where I got the badge as it allows me to describe my areas of expertise. Most of you should be well aware that I created it in CorelDRAW. Let me explain a few of the specifics.

The background was created with a customized pattern in the AbstractCurves plug-in. It is one of my favorite tools for creating cool backgrounds. At the top left is a headshot photo that was recently shot by Yucel Yalim of Phoenix Headshots. I masked out my photo and overlaid it on a graphic of the Arizona state flag.

There are various text elements typed out in CorelDRAW, each with a copy of the text filled with black to give a nice drop shadow. One of the text items was filled with a fountain fill to give it a metallic appearance. Of course our logo was also included.

On the bottom is the logo from the Chamber of Commerce. I’ve not yet asked for a vector copy as it isn’t something I’ll need to use often. So I grabbed a PNG file from their Web site to include on this name badge and also on our Web sites.

Once it was created, I simply printed it on pre-cut name badge sheets using the powerful imposition features in CorelDRAW. Shhhhh, don’t tell the folks at the meetings that it took me all of about ten minutes to create my name badge.