Recipe for the DCCO 2011 Badglets

The Outside:

There are 12 pages total, numbered 1 starting with the front cover, 12 ending on the back cover. I’ve broken those twelve pages into three separate files based on the processing or design needed for each set of data. The cover file has to be printed separately from the inside pages because of the data merge and the different paper used. Likewise, the schedule pages were rendered in a file separate from the other content pages b/c of the way I built the graphics for them. Each day’s schedule is designed as a single sheet of paper even though it would be split onto separate sheets for printing. Theoretically, all the internal pages could have been created in a single PSD if there were no fancy graphics/drawing considerations - or if the layout were designed around the idea of single vertical sheets, rather than longer horizontal layouts spanning multiple sheets.

I designed the badglet cover to be upside-down to the rest of the content: when hanging, the cover is oriented correctly to other people for good, old-fashioned nametag purposes. And the wearer can read the inside without aggravating any carpal tunnel. We also set up a data rule on the front cover (notice that the front cover is the one that opens from the left, b/c of the backwards nature of the overall assembly) to move the user/nick up a line if there was no company data. This prevented unsightly gaps. :)

Gary was able to generate the QR codes from the URL text using a font--I forget which one, but Gary will have it in his settings in his FusionPro software). The QR codes on the front and back covers are just a link to the user’s profile on drupalcampcolorado.org; here’s mine. For DrupalCon Denver, we’re gonna trick this profiling out a bit more with a vCard and more contact fields for the user to modify (or ignore: they can leave all of it blank if they want more privacy).

The images for ribbons are in a separate directory. We sorted them into three types: Volunteer (present or absent), Speaker (present or absent), and Sponsorship level (absent or levels 1-5). The Volunteer and Speaker images were simply set as 0 or 1 in the CSV table, and sponsorship levels correspond to the data value we assigned: 0 for none, 1 for Individual, 2 for Silver, 3 for Gold, 4 for Platinum, 5 for Molybdenum. This means that there are 5 different images corresponding to the sponsorship levels, and two other colors of ribbon.

An additional time-saving note: we made the mistake of exporting QR codes from Drupal instead of user profile URLs, and then I had to generate the URLs by hand (using a spreadsheet formula which wasn’t always accurate) when Gary wanted text instead of QR images. So I recommend you just export those data directly along with all the other data.

The Inside:

Sponsor logos were placed on the insides of the covers (pages 2 and 11), and as additional space allowed. For us, that meant at the bottom of Sunday’s schedule.

The QR code on the inside of the front cover (page 2), is a link to the smartphone schedule app we used, Guidebook. This was pretty handy for those users with smartphones, and it can be updated with minor changes if needed - unlike paper schedules.

We worked from two views during the Data Export process; the Badges and the Sponsor/Attendees (sorry, you can only see those if you have admin access at drupalcampcolorado.org; I left them here for our future reference). greggles did a vlookup in OpenOffice to match them up, and then did a find and replace to align the labels (select the column, then Molybdenum-->5, etc). Your resulting export should look something like this.

You also might notice on the PSD source files that the guidelines for the margins weren’t always quite right for predicting where content would actually fall on the printed page. I exported the PSD files to PDF and then imported them into InDesign. Once aligned on the InDesign document, I could see what layout adjustments I needed to make back in PS. I would then go back in and adjust in PS, resave to PDF, and then refresh the InDesign link to the new PDF. I had to do this iteratively for several of the pages.

Final Touches:

The snap swivel on the lanyards is pretty important to allow the user to easily snap on and off without damaging the badglet. Some people asked if we could have a longer lanyard (I’m only 5’3” tall and I thought they were too long), and/or a lanyard with a bungee in it, so they could stretch it out to read it. The snap made it easy for people to take it off to read it if they needed to, but an option of longer or stretchy lanyards might also be nice, and would help to reduce the wear.

And a final savvy endnote: I actually called sales at idsuperstore.com to make sure that they had in stock what I needed, and I’m really glad I did, b/c I had to change colors to make sure they had stock for me. Also, the shipping rate I got on the phone was significantly cheaper than their cart was showing me. It often pays to do a little recon.