• Orientation: portrait or landscape? Text and objects cannot be rotated, as in Text Ticket layouts.

• Background: Makes it difficult to counterfeit a pass. Can be a single color, a design or a photo. Things to consider when choosing a background:

• Artwork or photo from graphic designer

• Artwork is the exact size of your pass; this reduces storage space

• Artwork is the same ratio (length and width) as the card size to avoid distortion. The image needs to be enlarged.

• Avoid using a primary color for the entire background of your pass – it can cause the printer ribbon to break.

• Blocks of color (squares, ovals, etc.) Outside line color vs. box color. Watch out for primary color bands that span the width of your passes.

• Pen width.

• Text font and color.

• Text Alignment: left, center or right.

• Moving elements together or independently. Holding the Shift key allows for multiple elements on the Pass layout to be selected and thus moved as one object, together.

• Barcode considerations – what functionality is included for the pass program?

• Encoding mag swipes – what functionality is included for the pass program?

• Common fields on Pass layouts. (See list in the Salesware Layouts document.)

• Printer: During the process of designing a Pass layout, the printer that is used for the pass must be set as the default printer in Windows on the computer where the layout is designed. This correctly sets the dimensions of the layout and avoids the, “detail band too large to fit on page” error seen when the margins of the layout exceeds the dimensions of the card stock used for passes.

• Graphics:

• Size: Keep the graphic image as small as possible in order to decrease print time.

• File types: Use bitmap (.bmp) images.