On Conference Badge Design

Ultra geeky post if you’re a “conference connoisseur” like me.

Finding Interesting Strangers

Michael Lopp

“A badge needs to survive the conference. Three days, hanging around your neck all day and possibly all night (or getting shoved in a pocket when you hit the bar). After those three days, the lanyard needs to be intact and the badge needs to look like when you picked it up. Remember, the badge is likely the only object you’re going to need and keep. It’s the physical and long-lasting artifact that represents the conference, and if, after a day of use the badge looks crumpled and worn, my thought is, “They don’t give a shit about their conference and my experience is an afterthought.”

Totally agree.

“As I’ve written, the defining moment for a conference is not seeing the people you know, it’s finding the unknown. What I want to remember on the flight home isn’t how a speaker slayed. It’s the reflection on the incredibly unlikely sequence of random events that I happened to meet a hero of mine at a party at a bar that I never planned to attend. A conference is full of thousands of these brief, unlikely moments of potential, and it’s your badge’s job to make sure that they have a chance to occur.”

Nailed it

Via Daring Fireball