Interaction badges

The signals

Six cards from the deck’s Interaction realm. The first three are the classic set and the default below; the others are Cavendish additions. Each name and line is the card’s own.

Make your badges

Choose what goes in the stack, what size, and what paper you are printing on. The sheets below update as you go.

Everything here happens in your browser. A logo you pick is read from your own disk and written into the file you download — it is never uploaded, and there is nowhere for it to be uploaded to. See privacy.

This page needs JavaScript to draw the sheets. Without it, the signals and every instruction below are still readable, and the printed facilitator sheet carries the same material.

Printing it yourself

Four things, and the first one is the one that goes wrong.

1. Set the scale to 100%, not “fit to page.” Browsers shrink by default. A badge that has been shrunk to 94% no longer fits a badge holder, and the holes no longer line up between one sheet and the next. In Chrome that is More settings → Scale → Custom → 100. In Firefox, Scale → 100%. In Safari, uncheck Scale to fit.
2. Set margins to None, and pick the paper size you chose above.
3. Use card, not paper. 200–300 gsm (roughly 80–110 lb cover) goes through most home printers and survives a lanyard. Plain 80 gsm paper tears out of the punch holes within a day.
4. Measure the first one. Hold a ruler against a printed badge before you run two hundred. It should be exactly the trim size named in the summary above — 3 by 4 inches for the default.

To keep a file rather than print now: choose Save as PDF as the destination, with the same settings. Or use Download this sheet under any sheet above — that gives you an SVG with the fonts written inside it, so it opens the same on a machine that has never heard of this site.

Printing in bulk, at a print shop

For an event of any size, a digital press will be cheaper, straighter, and faster than your printer and a pair of scissors. Here is everything a print shop will ask for, in the order they will ask for it.

What to send

• Either the single-badge files — Download one badge per file, with bleed above. One SVG per signal, at trim size plus an eighth-inch bleed, with crop marks. Most shops prefer this and will impose the sheet themselves.
• Or the imposed sheets — Download this sheet under each sheet above, with A print shop selected. These are ready-to-guillotine: badges butt against each other, so every cut serves two badges, with crop marks in the margin at every grid line.
• Fonts are embedded in both. Nothing needs to be installed, and no text needs converting to outlines.
• If the shop insists on PDF: open the SVG in any browser and print to PDF at 100% with no margins, or open it in Illustrator, Inkscape, or Affinity and export. The geometry is in points, so nothing shifts.

The specification

• Trim size: whichever of the four you picked above, portrait or landscape — 4 × 3 in (102 × 76 mm), A7 (74 × 105 mm / 2.9 × 4.1 in), A6 (105 × 148 mm / 4.1 × 5.8 in), or 4 × 6 in (102 × 152 mm). Every one is a stock conference badge size, so holders, sleeves, and lanyards for it are off the shelf. The summary and the sheet caption both name the exact trim of what you are downloading.
• Bleed: 0.125 in (3 mm) on all four sides. A single-badge file is the trim plus a quarter inch overall — 3.25 × 4.25 in for a 4 × 3 badge in portrait, and so on for the rest.
• Safe area: 0.125 in inside the trim. The artwork already respects it — nothing that carries meaning comes near an edge.
• Color: the files are RGB. Ask the shop to convert with their own profile rather than guessing at CMYK values. The ink colors are green #1E8E3E, yellow #EAB308, red #D64541, orange #E8730C, gray #5F5E5A, on a card color of #FDF6E3 with text in #002B36 and #586E75. The greens and oranges sit slightly outside CMYK gamut and will shift a little; that is fine. What must survive is that the four colors are still clearly different from each other side by side — check that on the proof, not on a screen.
• Stock: 250–350 gsm (100–130 lb cover). Below about 250 gsm the holes tear out by the second day.
• Finish: matte or silk. Not gloss. Glare on a glossy badge makes it unreadable at exactly the angle you read a stranger’s badge from, which defeats the purpose.
• Sides: single-sided is fine — the back of each card faces the back of the card in front of it. If you want the meaning printed on the back, ask for it and supply the wording from The signals above.
• Optional, worth it: a 3 mm (1/8 in) corner round. Kinder on hands, and the stack stops dog-earing.
• Optional, worth it: ask the shop to drill the holes. It is usually a small one-off setup charge and it saves an hour of punching per hundred people.

Hole positions, if the shop is drilling

Two holes, 1/4 in (6 mm) across, a third of an inch down from the top edge. The spacing depends on the size you chose — pick one above and the exact figures appear here.

• The hole itself is the same at every badge size: a quarter-inch hole a third of an inch from the top is a fact about hole punches and binder rings, not about badges. Only the spacing moves, because it is set from the badge’s width.
• In portrait the centers sit a quarter of the width in from each side; in landscape, a third. Both keep the holes clear of the signal, so a punch can never take a bite out of the shape.
• Turn off Show hole-punch guides before you download if the shop is drilling, so the guide rings don’t print.

How much to order

One badge per signal per person. A hundred people with the classic three signals is three hundred badges — seventy-five Letter sheets at four up. Order ten percent over: badges get lost, and somebody always wants a spare set for the door.

Ask for a proof, and then do this to it

• Put it on a table and walk to the far side of the room. If you can’t tell which signal it is from there, it will not work in a corridor.
• Photocopy it in grayscale. The shape must still tell you which one it is. That is the test for whether the badge works for a colorblind reader, and it is not optional.
• Look at it in the dimmest light your venue has. An evening session is exactly when people most need the red one to be read correctly.

Assembly

What to buy

• Printed badges — one of each signal per person.
• A 1/4 in (6 mm) hole punch. An adjustable two-hole punch does a whole stack at once, set to the spacing given under hole positions for your size; a single punch and the printed guides works too, and takes longer.
• Binder rings, two per person. 3/4 in (19 mm) for three or four cards; 1 in (25 mm) if you are using all six, or if you went for one of the larger sizes. Loose-leaf rings, book rings and key rings all work.
• Lanyards with a breakaway clasp — two colors. The breakaway is not a preference. A neck cord that does not come apart under load is a strangulation hazard, and more so for children and for anyone who stims with what is round their neck.
• Optional: a badge holder or sleeve if the venue is wet or the event is long. Choose matte, for the same reason as the stock.
• Optional: a blank front card for a name, if people want to be named. Nobody should have to be.

What to do

1. Cut along the lines. Butt-cut, so one cut does two badges.
2. Stack each person’s cards. The card at the front is the live one — the others sit behind it until they are needed. Put come say hi at the front if you want a friendly default, or i’ve got this if you want a neutral one.
3. Punch two holes through the whole stack at once, on the printed guides, so every card in a stack lines up.
4. Thread a binder ring through each hole. Two rings, not one: with one ring the cards spin, and a spun card shows the wrong signal.
5. Clip the rings to the lanyard. Through the lanyard’s split ring or hook, with the breakaway clasp at the back of the neck.
6. Check that it flips. The wearer should be able to bring any card to the front with one hand, without taking the lanyard off and without looking down. If it doesn’t flip easily, the rings are too small.

The lanyard says something too: photos

Being photographed is a separate consent from being spoken to, and it needs its own signal, because a photo outlives the day. So the lanyard carries it:

• A red lanyard means no photos. Don’t photograph or film this person, don’t post a picture they are in, and check the background of your shot before you post it.
• A black lanyard means photos are fine.

Three things make this work, and without them it is decoration:

• Say it out loud at the start, put it in the program, and put it on a sign at the door. A code nobody was taught is not a code.
• Write the words on the lanyard too, or on a tag at the top of the stack. Red-versus-black is color on its own, which is the one thing the badges themselves refuse to do. In a dim hall, to a colorblind photographer, at a distance, the colors are not enough. no photos printed on the cord costs nothing.
• Tell the official photographer, and tell the staff. Somebody has to be willing to ask a person to delete a photo, or the signal is a suggestion.

Running the whole event this way? Zone a room works out which Cavendish zones your space can hold, and group access needs turns a pile of spreads into one brief for the room — without counting anybody.

Where this goes next

• The deck — the other seven realms, which lie face-down. Interaction is the exception, not the pattern.
• The guidebook on Interaction — what each card names, and how to hold it.
• Color communication badges at Stimpunks — the convention, its lineage, and the 1996 Autreat origin.
• Interaction badges in the Stimpunks field guide — the organizer’s short version.
• The livable worlds checklist — the bigger questions an event is really answering.