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4 Unique Ways to Customize Your Desk’s Nameplate

In many professions, a nameplate for your desk is a must-have. Whether you’re an office manager or a medical professional, your work space can benefit from having a plate that easily identifies your name. Nameplates are practical, affordable, and help to personalize your space. If you’re aiming to customize your nameplate to suit your unique personality, these are four tips that can help.

1. Reflect Your Profession

When you’re working in a professional environment, you want to have a professional nameplate. You could go with something sparse and utilitarian — your name in black letters against a silver or wood-imitation background, maybe. But you can also customize your nameplate without sacrificing professionalism.

There are some nameplates designed specifically for medical professionals, and from there for different niches of medical professional. A psychiatrist might order a different nameplate than a general physician or a nurse. Similarly, office management nameplates come in multiple different styles for multiple different positions.

It’s especially helpful to reflect your job in your nameplate when you work in an area in which many different professions mix. Maybe you’re the medical professional onsite at a rehab facility, and the rest of the staff don’t have your medical qualifications. Maybe you’re an office manager sharing space with other company representatives with different titles.

Reflecting your profession in your nameplate will allow people to see who you are and what you do at a glance. It takes a lot of the hassle out of introducing yourself, and it helps people find you more easily.

2. Use Unusual Materials

Most nameplates are made of some kind of metal. The name is usually engraved into the metal and set with a different color from the background. But do all nameplates need to be made of metal?

The answer is no. Some people prefer a wooden nameplate with their name specially carved into it. Others, springing for a fancier kind of plate, invest in nameplates made of marble or obsidian.

You’ll need to choose your ideal material based on your unique needs. Some materials will work better in certain office spaces than others. For example, you wouldn’t want a wooden nameplate in an area where it’s likely to come into contact with spilled liquid. Similarly, you might not want a fancy marble nameplate in a casual setting. It all depends on your personal aesthetic and circumstances.

3. Add a Unique Background

When you want a unique nameplate, one of the easiest ways to personalize it is by adding a unique background. Plates don’t need to be monochromatic. It’s traditional for a plate to spell your name in black letters against a silver or gray background, but that’s not the end-all be-all of nameplates.

Some nameplates are designed with background patterns that imitate marble or obsidian. These are ideal options when you want to get a plate made of traditional material while still adding a fancy aesthetic to your work space. Some name plates have opaque backgrounds, while others are slightly transparent. When you have a transparent name plate, you might want to add glitter or other items inside the plate itself.

It’s up to you. You know what image and style you want your nameplate to convey.

4. Add Stylized Colors and Designs

Some nameplates come with a border around your name. Others have stylized stenciled designs that look like lace or patterns of flowers. There are thousands of colors that you might incorporate into your nameplate; many nameplates are designed with background hues that shift from one end of the plate to the other. The possibilities are infinite.

No matter how you choose to customize your nameplate, you should make sure that it’s an accurate reflection of what you want to show in your office. The best nameplate is one that’s informative for other people while also being pleasing to you.