A Model & Her ZED Card

Just like every model needs his or her print port­fo­lio, every model needs a com­pos­ite card. They are essen­tial in acquir­ing jobs and clients.

Com­pos­ite cards are also referred to as zed cards. Mod­els, and often actors, who want to mar­ket them­selves use these cards. These cards come in dif­fer­ent shapes and sizes, so a model or actor is able to cus­tomize his or her card using their own cre­ativ­ity. A stan­dard card ranges from postcard-sized up to full 8x10. Con­sider keep­ing your comp card between post­card and 5x7 size; any­thing smaller or larger may be dis­carded by an agent sim­ply because it doesn’t fit well into their pile!

Zed Card is also known as a Comp Card

There are sev­eral ways a model can go about design­ing their comp card. If you have an agent, they will almost cer­tainly have a pre-made tem­plate design for your comp card that they will help you put together. There are also soft­ware pro­grams avail­able for cre­at­ing com­pos­ite cards, and if you’re not a do-it-yourself kind of per­son, you can work together with a pho­tog­ra­pher to put together your com­pos­ite card. There are also pro­fes­sional design ser­vices avail­able online, where all you need to do is upload your images and they will take care of the design and printing.

Your com­pos­ite card in a way can serve as your busi­ness card or port­fo­lio as well. You want to design your com­pos­ite card like your port­fo­lio; you want the best pic­tures you have to be on your com­pos­ite card. Design your comp card in a way that will reflect what you do best, but also show­case a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent pic­tures, imply­ing that you can adapt to any kind of work. A typ­i­cal card has a large head shot on the front and a vari­ety of smaller images on the back. Also on the front of the com­pos­ite card are listed basic sta­tis­tics like height, weight and mea­sure­ments. These stats are very impor­tant so make sure you put them on your card.

When vis­it­ing your agent, or any other agency, it’s impor­tant to look the part of a seri­ous pro­fes­sional model. Hav­ing an updated, com­plete, pro­fes­sional comp card is an impor­tant aspect of ‘look­ing the part’. Make sure not to over­look any of these small aspects of being a pro; it could make the dif­fer­ence in get­ting the job!