114 Conference Name Badges for Imperial College London, Printed From a Delegate Spreadsheet

The brief: one badge per delegate, three lines of data

The enquiry arrived in late August and asked for two things at once: samples of conference name badge printing and a price for around 85 badges with pre-punched holes for lanyards. Samples went out the same day, printed at A7, and the brief firmed up over the following fortnight into a landscape badge carrying a name, a job title and a company or institution, with the Imperial logo in black at the top and Imperial College London along the foot.

The delegate list came as a spreadsheet. That is the right way to send one: the names are merged straight onto the artwork, so nobody retypes 105 rows, which is where a delegate quietly becomes someone else. The same method runs behind our mail-merged place cards, and it carries the same warning, which we sent with the first proof: special characters can change during import or merging. Accented letters, curly apostrophes and non-standard glyphs can arrive on the badge as something else, so the proof has to be read, not skimmed.

Why the badge shrank from A7 to 90 × 60 mm

The first proof went out at A7, 105 × 74 mm, because that is the size the samples had been printed at. After the second proof the customer settled on 90 × 60 mm instead, and at the same time asked for the institution line to go back to the same size as the job title, having seen both set differently on paper.

A smaller badge is not automatically a safer badge. The type shrinks with the card, and the customer’s concern at the next proof was exactly that: some names were sitting outside the badge perimeter. So every badge was checked again at the new size, line by line, which is why the size change was followed by two further proofs rather than one.

The hole decides more than the size

These badges hang from the customer’s own lanyard clips, so each card is punched. Two questions came out of that, and both are worth asking before a badge is printed. The first was ours: the Imperial logo sat close to the top edge, so it was moved down, away from the punch. The second was the customer’s, and it is the question most people only ask after the event: will the hole tear with use?

On a 90 × 60 mm badge the answer comes from clearance rather than from the card being thick. The hole is set far enough in from the edge that a pull on the lanyard is carried by board on all sides of the punch, not by a thin bridge that splits on the first snag. Get that wrong and the badge tears on day one, no matter what it is printed on.

Alphabetical order is a packing job, not a printing job

Midway through, the customer asked for the badges to be printed and packed in alphabetical order, so they could be filed on a registration desk. Printing them in that sequence is easy. Keeping them in it is not: the sheets go through a guillotine, and trimming mixes the order. Sorting is therefore a hand operation after cutting, and it is worth naming it as one when the badges have to arrive ready for a desk. Ten spare badges were added to the run at the same time, at the customer’s request, so an error or an extra delegate on the day could be handled without a reprint.

Five proofs in three days: the badge timeline

Five proofs is not a sign of a job going wrong. It is what happens when a hundred-odd delegate records are checked page by page against a printed layout, and it is cheaper than reprinting a box of badges the night before a conference. Where a badge job genuinely is last minute, the shape is different: our last-minute badge printing case study covers 300 badges quoted and delivered inside one afternoon.

What to tell us when you order conference badges

• The list, as a spreadsheet. One delegate per row, one piece of information per column, spelled as it should print. Send it as it will appear, not as it was collected.
• The longest entry, not the typical one. The badge size is decided by the longest job title on the list, not by the average.
• How it will hang. Punched for your own clips, slot punched, or supplied with lanyards. The fixing sets the clearance at the top of the card, and the artwork has to leave room for it.
• Whether they need to arrive sorted. Alphabetical packing is a separate hand operation after trimming, so it belongs in the brief rather than in a message on the last day.
• Spares. Ask for a few extra badges in the same run; this job added ten, and they cover an error or a late delegate without a reprint.

The badges were printed, punched and packed at our London print shop for Imperial College London, whose campus address in South Kensington, SW7, was named in the enquiry, and they went out for delivery on the afternoon they were ready. If the artwork is coming from a designer rather than a spreadsheet, our guide on what file format to send covers the rest.