Your Custom Text Here
National Treasures badge
We recently made some badges for the National Treasures roadshows. National Treasures is an archive project which includes a new RTE TV show focussing on"the everyday objects that explore the history of the island of Ireland over the past 100 years."
The project includes an online archive and will culminate in an exhibition at the National Museum of Ireland.
Here's one of the badges with my Grandad's old bellows camera. You can submit your own object at www.nationaltreasures.ie
Some badges we recently made for a troop of scouts using a design hand drawn by one of the children.
Jeff makes a badge
Recently, while making some badges, I was watching one of my favourite cartoons Clarence and was delighted to see Jeff designing and making a badge. This is basically a typical working day at BadgeMaking.ie
38mm printed badges
Some recently printed badges related to STEM produced for Dublin City University.
58mm printed badges for O Boland
We recently printed these 58mm badges for the Galway band O Boland. Badges are a great merch item for bands to sell at gigs.
We're loving these awesome floppy disk beer mats from Trouble Brewing. It's an excellence example of how to use design and print to stand out and start a conversation.
Another 5 star review on our Facebook page.
We've just received another review on Facebook and we've maintained our record of 100% 5star reviews. Thanks Cian.
I lost my keys recently so my new set have an email address printed on one of our bottle opener keyrings.
We've just received another 5 star review on Facebook. That's 10/10 reviews giving us five stars. You can give us a rating on our Facebook page. It's a big help to a small business like BadgeMaking.ie and only takes a few seconds.
BadgeMaking.ie didn't produce these badges for the TypeCon 2016 conference in Seattle but they caught my eye on the Identity Designed blog. It's a very nice example of badges being used as a striking element within a visual identity.
International Day of the Girl hashtag badges
We recently produced these hashtag badges for Plan International for the International Day of the Girl. Including a hashtag on your badge is a way to encourage social media engagement especially at events. The hashtag badges can be an effective nudge suggesting to your audience that they share images or thoughts online. A hashtag specific to your event, cause or product also helps the audience to find other people's social media responses by uniting it under a single tag.
I have attended events in the past where visitors were tweeting or tagging Instagram posts with four or five variations of a hashtag. These badges eliminate while also communication the spirit and message behind the International Day of the Girl.
In an attempt to encourage people to talk to each other on the Tube an American in London has been giving away badges in Underground stations. Jonathan Dunne's badges are printed with the words 'Tube Chat?' and have received a mixed response.
It's definitely an interesting use of a badge and shows how badges could be used to encourage a particular behaviour in real time and not just to display a message. However not all Londoners share Dunne's enthusiasm for chatting with strangers on public transport. A number of parody badges have been produced in response with messages like "No chat please, we're British".
Badges have always been a very popular merch item for bands and musicians to sell at gigs. We've printed badges for a range of Irish musicians including these 25mm badges recently made for the Galway based band Majestic Bears who describe themselves as a 'Grizzly Irish Folk Band'.
You can listen to the Majestic Bears on Bandcamp.
Leanne Ross's slide featuring our Blog. Image via A Cup of Lee
Leanne Ross who runs the website A Cup of Lee was one of the speakers at the Social Media Belfast conference. Leanne is a digital PR professional and spoke about "Social for Small Business and Blogging"
She used BadgeMaking.ie as one of her examples of good use of blogging by a small business. One of her slides (pictured above) featured badges we recently made for Moobles and Toobles for a trade show.
You can read a summary of what she spoke about and view her slides here on her own blog A Cup of Lee.
We've just received a 5 star review on our Google+ page.
Got 100 badges made for an upcoming wedding with a simple # names, they are brilliant and great quality they will go down a storm on the day, had them within a week of ordering and was really inexpensive, i would highly recommend Badgemaking.ie
Thanks Martin!
Pokemon Go
Dublin at the moment, like most other cities, is currently full of people walking around looking at their phones (well even more than usual). They're playing Pokemon Go the new augmented reality smart phone game.
When the game was first released in Ireland I noticed adults sheepishly walking around playing the game trying to hide what they were really doing. In recent days more and more people are playing and nobody is trying to hide it. Why?
I think it was to do with a concept known as 'social proof'. This is the idea that when we see others, especially other people like us, exhibiting a particular behaviour then we are more emulate that behaviour ourselves. Unlike most games which can be played at home in order to play Pokemon Go the player has to go out in the world and walk around. The visibility of adults playing the game emboldens others to play the game without embarrassment. Due to there visibility every player becomes an advertisement for the game.
If a small business or organisation can make an aspect of their project more visible they can leverage social proof to promote their product, idea or cause. Badges are an ideal way to do this. A well designed badge will be voluntarily work by your existing customer and seen by their friends. Your new potential customers will trust their friends much more than they will trust any paid advertising or other marketing message coming straight for you.
The badges we made for the Mattress Men documentary about Mattress Mick are a great example of this. The badges focus on cheesy, ironic, mattress themed puns which are appropriate to the subject matter of the documentary and to the target audience. These badges offer the wearer something, in this case humour, rather than just prominently pushing the name of the documentary. People are happy to wear the badges because of the humour and the wearing of the badge is an endorsement of the film to their friends and colleagues. The same principle applies to any project or cause.
Mattress Men Badges
58mm Printed Awards Badges
We made these badges for a sports club who were having their annual awards ceremony. The badges are 58mm in diameter and each features the club's logo with name of the award and year. Badges are great as a cheaper alternative to medals if you are on a budget.
We can also produce printed digital medals which look just like the badges shown above but come on a ribbon worn around the next. Medals are a special order item and turnaround time may be longer than it is for badges
38mm Printed Badges for Moobles and Toobles for the Playtime Trade Show in Paris
Badges make the ideal giveaway item to promote your brand at trade shows. They're an high visibility item that will be seen by many people throughout the trade show and beyond as they are worn by visitors to your booth.
Pictured here are some cute 38mm badges we printed for the Irish baby clothing business Moobles and Toobles. They took the badges to the Playtime Trade show in Paris where they were promoting their screenprinted organic fairtrade cotton baby clothes.
Printed Badges for Moobles and Toobles at the Playtime Trade Show in Paris
58mm keyrings
58mm bottle opener keyrings
We've just expanded our range to include two new products. In addition to printed badges and magnet we now also provide printed keyrings.
These are 58mm in diameter and come in two varieties. The ordinary keyring features a plain white plastic back and the bottle opener keyring has a metal back which you may have guessed functions as a bottle opener.
The bottle opener keyrings would be a particularly good promotional product for a craft beer brewery.
If you're interested in ordering either of these products please get in touch by email: BadgeMaking@gmail.com
Irish LGBTQ Badges
We recently produced a set of three Irish LGBTQ badges which we sold in the lead up to Dublin LGBTQ Pride to raise funds for GLEN.
We sold 163 badge sets to 86 customers in 4 countries. The largest amount ordered by a single customer was 20 sets of badges!
The campaign has come to an end and we're delighted to announce we raised at total of €719 for the charity. Thanks to all who contributed and we hope you've enjoyed the Pride weekend.
Also a big thank you to Broadsheet.ie, Lovin' Dublin, Her.ie, FrockAdvisor and U Magazine for featuring the badges.
Below is an image of one of the badges out in the world. If you bought a set please share your photos with us on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.
