Hello, My Name Is

2008 Sep 19
Comments 31
Published In Design
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Badges are often a decidedly unfun and necessary evil of attending conferences. I have a pile of the things, some too big or too small, and others so garish they feel like a punishment. I can deal with an ugly badge, but I hate an unusable one.

The previous version of the An Event Apart badges that I designed used a generous setting of Garamond, contained all the relevant information, and looked the part just fine. But in practice we found the type to be too soft and the additional information a tad too big.

When it comes to conference badges, information can be sorted into two categories: critical and non-critical—which can just as easily be summed up as seen by others and seen by you. Anything that is “seen by others” should be large or digestable immediately from a distance. Everything else is pretty much there for people who want to hang on to the badge as a keepsake.

Mike Davidson wrote on the topic a while back, calling this mindset “The S.O.B.” or “Socially Optimized Badge”. When there are a few hundred people sitting around at a conference, chances are good that they know where they are and what they’re attending. Usually, the most vital piece of information they don’t know is everyone else’s name.

The new AEA badges I designed this year use Joshua Darden’s Freight Sans, a sturdy typeface at a size that can be read from across the room. All of the secondary information like the event name or date are given considerably less real estate.

I don’t get the chance to do a lot of print work, but I really enjoy making these. We dump the attendee list out in XML and I pull it into an InDesign template (which is like coaxing a fish to spontaneously sprout legs and walk on land). I then go through each badge to tweak longer names that don’t work with the default type sizes I’ve set up.

The end result isn’t a modern marvel of design, but it is a much more useful badge; big and clear type for the important stuff while the secondary info gets out of the way. And it’s tremendously useful for a chronic name forgetter such as myself. Now I can be sneaky when I cruise badges.

Left: old AEA badge design, right: new design

Comments 31
Design Tags Beige, Blue, Freight Sans, Photo
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31 Comments

Permalink for this comment Ben Carlson says: September 19, 2008

Definitely like the second one better, but what happened to the “Speaker” denotation? That seems kind of useful. Good work though, and the large sans-serif definitely works a lot better than the softer/lighter/thinner Garamond.
Permalink for this comment aliotsy says: September 19, 2008

Nice work, and nice write-up.

Couldn’t make AEA in San Francisco this year, but I remember meeting you at it last year, and you started staring at my badge and thinking aloud about ideas to improve them for this year. You consummate perfectionist. ;)
Permalink for this comment Kyle Weems says: September 19, 2008

I agree that badges are both needed and evil. It can be really hard to ignore this large swinging bit of plastic-wrapped cardboard bouncing around everywhere you walk (and mine always seem to get flipped around no matter what).

The new design definitely is an improvement on the old. I certainly would hope that most people know where they are at a conference, but it seems all to frequently be the most notable text on the badges I’ve seen.

Now if only you could shrink the size of the badges themselves some, and fix that whole flipping around problem while you’re at it.
Permalink for this comment Matt Radel says: September 19, 2008

“And it’s tremendously useful for a chronic name forgetter such as myself.”

Haha – your real motive comes the the surface. :)

Great looking badges – very functional, very nice.
Permalink for this comment Jonathan Snook says: September 19, 2008

Putting the schedule on the back of the badge is also nice. Alternatively, including a schedule that can be folded into the same size as the badge would also work just fine.
Permalink for this comment Matt Munsey says: September 19, 2008

I really liked these badges. I still have mine from New Orleans. I agree with Snook though, a schedule would be quite nice!
Permalink for this comment Scott Vandehey says: September 19, 2008

Thanks for writing this. I noticed the badges were different at this year’s conference, and I was hoping you’d talk about the motivation behind the changes. For what it’s worth, I agree that it’s a huge improvement.
Permalink for this comment Jason Santa Maria says: September 19, 2008

@ Ben Carlson :

Definitely like the second one better, but what happened to the “Speaker” denotation?

We found that the information really wasn’t that important. Most people knew who the speakers were already, or recognized them from when they presented.

@ Kyle Weems :

bq. (and mine always seem to get flipped around no matter what)

The badge clips we use go a long way to help prevent flippage. They are definitely the best clips I’ve found (and I’ve tested a bunch before going with these). We also duplicate the same print on both sides of the badge, so even if it flips, you’re still good to go.

@ Jonathan Snook :

Putting the schedule on the back of the badge is also nice.

I totally agree about the schedule, at least for larger conferences. I’ve been dying for something like that at SXSW for years. For AEA, we only have one track, so the schedule didn’t seem super important to include here (and it’s already included with a booklet we hand out to attendees).
Permalink for this comment Ryan Parr says: September 19, 2008

Any chance I can get my old badges re-printed from Seattle 06, 07?

Love the update, the site and the conference. ~ryan
Permalink for this comment Aaron Riddle says: September 19, 2008

Very nicely executed re-design! A nice improvement.
Permalink for this comment Dave S. says: September 19, 2008

Having done badges twice myself, I saw a similar evolution. The weak spot is long names of course, you need to account for the odd dozen+ character last name, which can affect the whole batch adversely.

The first time was a real learning experience. I used Kinko’s (shudder) because I didn’t have a clue how to merge a spreadsheet with an InDesign template. They didn’t either, but of all the printers I talked to, they were the only one that could offer any advice on merging a spreadsheet with some form of designed source material. That ended up being Word. That’s right. I had to flatten my artwork and pull it into Word as a JPG, then place my text on top with whatever font they happened to have installed on their system. (Arial as luck would have it. I still wake up screaming some nights.) With that kind of a crapshoot I had to resize everything to a “this will fit for sure” font size, which ended up being way too small.

The second time someone — I think it was Maxine — hit on the fact that you can merge an InDesign template with a CVS-formatted text file fairly easily. Set up one badge just so, point it at a file and hit a button, then it’ll pull in the data and duplicate across multiple pages to leave you with a nice 100+ page PDF that any real printer is more than happy to print and trim.

And the really nice thing about this second way is that I was able to make manual adjustments to the final merge before I saved out the PDF. Starting with a much larger text size was no problem, because I could eyeball the final output and shrink any troublesome names that wrapped or spilled out.
Permalink for this comment Barbara Gavin says: September 19, 2008

I am running a conference in November and recently learned of this application.
http://big.first.name/

For me, the killer feature is automatically scalable fonts, so no matter how long your first name, the system fills the badge with it.

Also, I will save money but not having to create logo’d badge stock.
Permalink for this comment Daniel Curran says: September 19, 2008

So what lanyard/clips did you go with? Where did you get them from? (I’m in this business myself)
Permalink for this comment Colin Devroe says: September 19, 2008

I’ve been to many conferences over the last few years that, now that you’ve written this post it has been brought to my attention, suffered greatly for poorly designed badges.

Methinks someone should open source such a design for good badges… giving the designer of each respective event the chance to slightly modify the colors, logos, and information slightly. Everyone wins.
Permalink for this comment Jason Santa Maria says: September 19, 2008

@ Dave S : Thanks for sharing that! Yeah, it sounds like we ended up traveling down very similar paths.

@ Daniel Curran : The ones pictured are new variations of the clips we were using before and are arranged by our event planner’s promo company. I’m actually not certain of the brand, but it’s some sort of bulldog clip that doesn’t rotate (hence preventing flippage).
Permalink for this comment Robert Mohns says: September 19, 2008

This year was my first AEA, and I was simply stunned by the quality and utility of the badge. Had no idea it was your work.

My favorite bit? Same on both sides, which solves the problem of badges that always flip themselves over. And visually attractive on top of that? Heaven!
Permalink for this comment Dan Boland says: September 19, 2008

It’s funny, because I remember picking up my badge at AEA Chicago in 2006 and thinking that the type wasn’t practical (read: thick) enough for use on a badge. This is a tremendous improvement, and importantly, still suits the AEA brand.
Permalink for this comment Patrick Haney says: September 19, 2008

Last year’s AEA badges were certainly a huge improvement over any other conference badge I’ve had in the past, but I also agree that there was more emphasis on things like “An Event Apart” and the venue/date than was necessary. If I’m at the conference, I don’t need to know what city it’s held in or when it is (I’m already there, right?) at the moment.

The new badge design is even better, though I’m not sold on the use of Freight Sans. Maybe it’s because I’m comparing the Garamond from the old to the Sans of the new, or maybe it’s because I’m not seeing the badge on an actual person (I bet that would change my mind).

At any rate, excellent work on what many would consider a very low priority task for a conference organizer. I’ve kept every badge I’ve ever had, so at some point maybe I can post them all for comparison to what they should’ve been, namely this design (or at least something like it).
Permalink for this comment Jason Santa Maria says: September 19, 2008

@ Patrick Haney : Trust me, in person, the Garamond just fades into a blur from more than a couple feet away. The Freight Sans was a huge improvement for comprehension, IMO.
Permalink for this comment Mike D. says: September 19, 2008

What a beautiful S.O.B. you’ve produced there, sir. Well done you!

A+ from me.
Permalink for this comment zeldman says: September 19, 2008

I’m glad this story is out and I’m glad this blog post is done. I’ve been watching Jason art-direct it all week.
Permalink for this comment Dave says: September 19, 2008

Love the redesign. You merged the date footer and moved it closer to the event, which definitely makes more sense in this case. (I would guess the older design followed some of the clues of, for example, the letterhead?)

I wonder if you would have less of an issue with space if the last names weren’t in all caps?
Permalink for this comment Jason Robb says: September 19, 2008

Yea, Freight Sans > Garamond, in this context at least.

You’ve got to consider the context for print. While I consider Garamond more identifiable with the rest of the brand, it doesn’t cut it in this context.

Much easier to read from afar. Very nice!
Permalink for this comment zeldman says: September 20, 2008

Speaking of badges…
Permalink for this comment Mark Phillips says: September 21, 2008

I print this type of thing for a living (passes, membership cards, so forth) and I can tell you two things: long names are a pain, and there’s way easier ways of producing them than they way you did it. The package we use to send data to the press can cope with long names, basically by going “oh, more than X characters, let’s change to a condensed font/smaller point size/whatever”. But I have to say, after seeing so many passes try and jam soo much useless stuff onto such a small area, your’s are an absolute relief to the eyes.
Permalink for this comment Jason Santa Maria says: September 21, 2008

@ Mark Phillips : Yeah, I imagine there are more automated ways to do it, but I actually don’t mind doing it my way for now. I like to go in and correct little things like capitalization or punctuation problems while I’m proofing and setting the text. It doesn’t take very long to go through 500 badges and it makes me feel good to know that everything is as tight as it can be for the attendees.
Permalink for this comment Flug says: September 22, 2008

It seems kind of funny to me that you wrote this examination on badges. In spite of you are totally right, I wonder why people who design those badges don´t ask themselves some crucial questions, just those you pointed out.
Permalink for this comment Heath Flohre says: September 23, 2008

You might be a fish out of water, but have you ever considered InDesign for web site wireframing/prototyping? With the ability to quickly set up columns/gutters and tying styles into CSS, seems like it could be a good starting point.
Permalink for this comment Jason Santa Maria says: September 23, 2008

@ Heath Flohre : I have tried InDesign for wireframes in the past and I find it to still be a bit too manual for my tastes. After seeing Jeremy Keith’s talk at AEA San Francisco, I’ve been playing around with using some of the CSS frameworks for wireframes and prototypes. Very quick and promising.
Permalink for this comment Daniel Sofer says: October 02, 2008

Jason: These were awesome badges, perfect. I was going to congratulate whoever did these. So congratulations!

Best points for me were: very readable at a distance, printed on both sides, “egalitarian” aspect of leaving out conference hierarchy (i.e.: Speaker). Anyone could tell you and Zeldman from your twitter icons anyway. Kidding. Somewhat.

Now about those neoprene folios you handed out…
Permalink for this comment Kaytlyn Sanders says: October 03, 2008

Now I am in no way affiliated with this business, I swear, but I found them at the Seattle Green Festival and have been wondering about using these at my next event: Sustainable Industries Rebadge

Sorry for the green preachiness, but thought I would suggest it since you have such a large number you need to hand out at each event. And they have an assortment of other folders and products for your paper handouts. OK, now I need to go contact them….