The first comp card: what goes on it

A comp card is the thing that stays in the room after you have left it. A client sees twenty people in a morning, remembers four faces and none of the names; the card on the table is what connects one to the other three days later when the decision is made. It is a working tool, not a keepsake — which is why the design rules for it are so unromantic.

You will see it called a zed card, a z card or a composite card. Same object. In English-speaking markets the term that appears on print orders, in agency briefs and in client emails is comp card, and that is the word to use.

The front

One image. Not two, not a strip.

That image should be the clearest read of your face that exists — eye contact, uncluttered background, light that shows the bone structure rather than flattening it. It is the frame a client will use to recognise you when you walk in, so a heavily styled shot with a hat over one eye is the wrong choice however good it is.

Your name goes on the front, set large enough to read at arm's length. The agency's mark goes on the front. Nothing else does. Every additional element competes with the only job the front has.

The back

Three to five images, laid out on a grid with real space between them. The number matters less than the coverage: each image should answer a question the front does not.

A useful set of four looks something like this — a clean beauty frame close enough to show skin and expression; a full-length that shows the body honestly, in something plain, standing straight; one frame in movement, because clients booking anything with video attached want to know you can move; and one styled frame that reads as a client's world rather than a costume.

What does not belong on the back: five frames from a single shoot in a single outfit, which shows range you do not have; a collage; anything cropped so tightly it becomes a texture study; and images retouched to the point where the person who walks into the casting is recognisably someone else. That last one is not a style problem. It wastes the client's morning and yours.

Underneath the images sits the measurements block, and beside or below it the agency's contact details — the agency name, a phone number that a human answers, an email address. A card without contact details is a coaster.

Comp card size

Two standards, and which one you print depends on where the card will be handed over.

North America: 5.5 × 8.5 inches. The dominant format in the United States and Canada, and the size US agency drawers and client binders are built around.

Europe and much of the rest: A5, 148 × 210 mm. Some European markets and a number of agencies also use a 10 × 15 cm postcard format, which is cheaper to print and post but gives the back much less room.

If you work across markets, the sensible approach is one design laid out at both trims rather than a compromise size that fits neither. The print specification is worth getting right the first time: 3 mm bleed on every edge, all type kept at least 5 mm inside the trim, images at 300 dpi at final size, CMYK rather than RGB, and a heavy stock — a card that bends in a bag looks like it has been carried around for a year. Matte is the safer finish; gloss shows fingerprints and reflects badly under office lighting.

The measurements block

The standard set is height, bust or chest, waist, hips, dress size, shoe size, hair colour and eye colour. Men's cards carry chest, waist, inside leg, suit or jacket size, collar and shoe size.

Units follow the market: centimetres for European and Gulf clients, inches for the US, and clothing sizes in whichever system the market uses — which means a card printed for one market is genuinely wrong in another rather than merely inconvenient. Carrying both sets of figures on one card is possible if the layout is disciplined, and unreadable if it is not.

The numbers have to be true. Not rounded, not aspirational, not from last year. Every comp card at this agency carries the real measurements for the same reason that fashion casting begins with the sample size rather than the face: a sample set exists in one size, and a model who is two centimetres out at the waist costs a client half a shooting day. A card that overstates gets you into one fitting and out of the file.

Mistakes that waste a print run

• Printing too early. Cards are printed against a book that has settled. If you are still shooting your first tests, wait — the images will be better in two months and the cards you printed today go in the bin.
• Printing too many. A first run in the low hundreds is plenty. Measurements change, hair changes, and a card is out of date faster than anyone expects.
• Type too small. Names and numbers set at six point look elegant on screen and are illegible on a table in a badly lit meeting room.
• No white space. Five images edge to edge read as a contact sheet. Four with air around them read as a card.
• Retouching that changes the person. Covered above, and worth repeating because it is the most common serious error.
• Old contact details. If you change agency, the old cards are dead. Do not hand them out with a pen correction.

Who pays for it

The agency. Producing a comp card is part of representing you, in the same way that arranging tests and taking you to castings is.

If you are ever asked to pay for your own card as a condition of being taken on — or for a compulsory shoot with a nominated photographer to produce the images for it — that is the point to stop. An agency earns a commission on the work it brings you; anyone earning from applicants is running a different business, whatever the office looks like. The application page states the position on fees plainly, and it is worth checking that any agency you deal with will state theirs as plainly.

The digital card

Most cards are now sent rather than handed over. The PDF version is what actually travels: attached to an email, dropped into a casting platform, forwarded between a producer and a client.

Keep it under a few megabytes, because a 40 MB attachment gets bounced by corporate mail servers and never reaches the person deciding. Name the file so it survives a download folder — surname-firstname-comp-card.pdf, not final_v3.pdf. Export at the same trim as the print version so the layout stays recognisable. And make sure the images on it match your profile on the agency site, because a client who looks you up and finds a different person assumes the card is old.

When to update

After a haircut or a colour change, which alters the front image more than anything else on the card. After a real change in measurements. Before a trip to a new market, in that market's format and units. And once a year regardless, because the version of you on a card printed eighteen months ago is quietly working against you in every meeting.

The limit on all of this is the images themselves. A perfectly laid out card built on weak frames is a well-designed weak card, and no amount of grid discipline fixes that. Which is why the card comes after the shooting rather than before it — how that shooting works is set out in test shoots and your first book.