To have a productive workforce in a big company these days, your drones need to feel special, wanted and fancy. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s employee ID cards make everyone look like boring office losers. One Microsoft employee decided it was time to jazz it up a bit, and came up with something beautiful.
The designer’s name is Ahmet Alp Balkan, and he’s simultaneously an engineer working for Microsoft in Redmond on the Azure cloud platform. He noticed that the Redmond campus is going through a huge rebranding at the moment, and thought that the hip-based ID cards needed a bit of a spruce too:
For a while, I had this idea of redesigning Microsoft employee badges for a modern and neat look. So I spared a few hours this weekend. It’s over a year Microsoft has started to rebrand itself, starting from its logo to a brand new looking OS, from campus shuttles to direction signs on the campus and so on. Many employees are wearing this badge on their belts or pockets every day. So why not redesign this good ol’ beast? Here we go.
Right now, the employee badges look like this.
Snore.
So Ahmet decided that a few things needed to change.
The new minimalistic look has several benefits. The front side just has what the person in front of you looking at your badge needs. Again, first name is highlighted using a heavier font weight than last name.
Also, the front side only has the symbol part of the logo. Microsoft is a well known company in the town as well as in rest of the world, so people would recognize the logo most of the time.
Pictures of the employees, I believe, should be picked and provided by them, and preferably should be on a solid background even though it looks even cooler on non-solid backgrounds.
The Microsoft two-tone blue and white was preserved, but the square ID was swapped out for a friendly-looking photo of the employees choice, and the text was jazzed up and centred to make it more personal.
The front of the card is clean, while the important identifying information like the employee number was moved to the back of the card. It’s sensitive information, Ahmet explains, so you don’t want everyone seeing it immediately. There’s also a chip on the back of the swipe card for storing this information securely.
Different departments would also have different colours:
Ahmet updated his blog the other day saying that Microsoft execs and staffers have responded positively to the idea. Maybe they’ll use his revamp? Either way, it’s gorgeous. [Ahmet Balkan]