Badges

Badges are printed IDs that are worn to indicate convention membership.

Badges really have multiple purposes. They serve as a social tool to help people meet each other, they serve as a pass for people to gain entrance to convention events and areas, and they serve as a means of security in that they provide an ID for each member that is tied back to their registration information by their badge number. Some people also like to use their badge holder as a place to put their room key when they're all dolled up and have no pockets.

Style and Content

Badges are designed to be visually unique for each convention and each year with the artwork that's on them, but the content is pretty consistent from year to year in the same convention.

Important: If you want members to be able to read one another's names from their badges (from a socially acceptable distance), do not put names in a font any smaller than 28-point type. Really. We mean it.

Minimum Information to put on a Membership Badge

• Name (this can be a Badge Name or a real name)

• Badge Number

• Name of the Convention

• some kind of artwork (see section on Security Concerns, below)

Optional Additional Information

-varies according to the size and purpose of your event

• Real name (if above name was a badge name)

• City and/or State where the person lives

• Position/Title/Rank

• Space for Room Party Stickers

• Some Tag or color coding to distinguish between Adult and Child or underage Memberships. Note that while doubting someone is of age to drink if they have an underage badge is a fine thing, concluding that someone is of age because they have an adult badge is not. Continue to check ID in the consuite if serving alcohol.

• Convention-specific nifty phrases, etc.

• Dates the convention is being held

• A space formated to indicate Day or Weekend memberships, usually something like

| Fri | Sat | Sun |

Where the rule is that the days the person has a membership for can be read and the other days are blacked out.

=Nifty Things to put on the Back

(all optional)

• Program participants' schedules (can be done with a sticker)

• Real name (if name on the front is a badge name)

• Space for name and contact info (phone or room number) for associated adult, if this is a child badge. In any case, Ops should have this information.

Security Concerns

Since badges are used for admission to convention spaces and events, you want to make some effort to make them hard to duplicate. Using a dark color to prevent photocopying also makes them hard to read. A common approach is to decorate the badge with artwork (typically by the artist GoH, if there is one) that will not photocopy well, either because it is in color or because the detail in it is sufficiently fine that a photocopy will look noticable worse than the original. Making the background some color other than white also creates a barrier for duplication (one more thing to match), but not a strong one in the age of Kinkos.

All Concom and Staff should be trained to note the Badge Number of any individual who is acting inappropriately or otherwise giving them problems. For this purpose, the badge number should be obvious and legible on the badge. If badge names are used instead of real names, especially if people are allowed to write in their badge names by hand, this is the only piece of information on the badge that will permit Operations to track down the real person associated with a badge.

Make sure your staff all know what badges look like. If you are going to provide press passes, make sure people know what those look like too.