A conference badge is the piece of card everybody wears for the length of an event. It is the most handled object at any conference, it is looked at more often than the programme, and it carries more decisions than its size suggests: what is printed on it, how large, which way round it hangs, and what a colour on it is allowed to mean.
What belongs on one
The first name, very large. Large enough to read across a coffee queue without leaning in, which in practice means considerably larger than looks right on a screen. This is the one element that matters and almost every badge under-sizes it.
A company, group or city, medium. Useful context and a conversational opening. Optional, and better left blank than filled with something the wearer would rather not announce.
Pronouns, where offered. Small, optional, and printed rather than added by hand where possible, because a printed field is a normal part of the badge and a handwritten addition is a statement.
Practical information on the back. The wifi password, the schedule at a glance, an emergency number, and who to find with a problem. It costs nothing and it saves several hundred questions.
What does not belong on one
A job title in small type, which nobody reads and which introduces a hierarchy into every conversation. A QR code that resolves to a lead-capture system, unless the wearer has been told and has agreed. And anything that makes a badge worth stealing.
If the title is small, it is decoration. If it is large, it is a hierarchy.
The lanyard problem
A badge on a single-point lanyard spins, and a badge that has spun is blank. The fix is two attachment points, which costs a fraction of a penny and is the single most reliable improvement available to any event.
Double-sided printing is the alternative and is worth doing anyway, since it also solves the badge that has flipped. Doing both is normal at events that have run more than twice.
Colours, and what they are allowed to mean
Colour on a badge marks a category, and every category is a decision about what the room can see. Speaker, organiser and volunteer are useful, because they tell an attendee who to ask.
The one that needs care is photography consent, usually a coloured lanyard meaning the wearer does not want to be photographed. It works, it is widely used, and it only works if the event actually enforces it.
What to avoid is a colour that marks status, such as separating sponsors’ staff from everybody else in a way that is visible across a room. It creates exactly the two-tier feeling a small event is trying not to have, which is examined on community versus corporate.
Registration, and what the badge does there
The badge is also the queue. Registration at a small event is somebody finding a piece of card in a box, and everything about how the boxes are arranged decides how long a hundred and fifty people stand in a corridor.
Splitting the alphabet across two or three tables is the standard fix and it roughly halves the wait. Signing the split clearly matters as much as making it, because a queue that has to ask which table it belongs in has not been split at all.
Pre-printed badges are worth the effort even when numbers are uncertain. Writing names on the morning is slower per person than finding a printed one, and it happens at exactly the moment the queue is longest.
Practical production
Print them alphabetically and lay them out in clear groups, because registration is a queue and the queue moves at the speed of finding a badge. Bring blanks and a marker for the names that were misspelled and the people who registered on the day.
Collecting lanyards at the end for reuse is worth doing and costs one person by the door. What is not worth doing is printing the year on the badge, which is what stops them being reusable.
The other objects an event hands out are on conference swag, and the rest of the vocabulary is in the glossary.
Questions
What should be printed on a conference badge?
The first name very large, a company or city at medium size, pronouns small if offered, and practical information on the back: wifi, the schedule, who to find with a problem. Most designs invert this and give the top line to a job title.
How large should the name be?
Larger than looks right on a screen. It has to be readable across a coffee queue without anybody leaning in, which is the one thing a badge is for and the thing almost every badge under-sizes.
Why do badges need two lanyard attachment points?
Because a badge on a single point spins, and a badge that has spun is blank. Two points cost a fraction of a penny and are the most reliable improvement available. Double-sided printing solves the same problem from the other direction.
What should badge colours mean?
Roles an attendee needs to identify: speaker, organiser, volunteer. Photography consent works well as a coloured lanyard, provided the event enforces it. What to avoid is a colour that marks status and is visible across a room.
Should the year be printed on a badge?
Not on the lanyard, because that is what stops it being reusable. Collecting lanyards at the end costs one person standing by the door and saves the cost of buying them again.