Designing Button Badges for Comic Conventions: Sizes, Bleed, Printing and Selling Tips

Walk the artist alley at almost any comic convention and you will see button badges on most tables. They are cheap to make, quick to buy, easy to carry and fun to collect. For an illustrator, they are often the first product to sell and a low-risk way to find out which of your designs people actually connect with. This guide covers the practical side of designing, printing, pricing and selling badges at conventions: sizes, wrap and bleed, file setup, finishes, backs, a worked costing example, display, packaging and inventory.

Our own badge archive includes convention badges made for Malaysian events such as Comic Fiesta and AFA, and many of the lessons below come from the same kind of small-batch, table-by-table selling.

Why badges work as an artist alley entry product

A convention table usually needs a range of price points. Large prints and artbooks bring in the most money per sale, but many visitors, especially students and first-time attendees, are on tight budgets. Badges fill the gap.

• Impulse price: badges typically sit at the lowest price on the table, which makes them an easy “yes”, and they are often bought alongside a print.
• Low minimums: many printers accept small runs per design, and with your own badge press you can make exactly as many as you need.
• Design testing: a badge of a character costs very little to produce. If a design sells out, it may be worth turning into a print or acrylic charm.
• Collectability: series, sets and limited event designs encourage people to come back to your table, at the same convention and the next one.
• Portability: a few hundred badges fit in a shoebox, which matters if you travel to events by bus or plane.

The trade-off is that badges have thin margins in absolute terms. You need volume, and your time per design must stay small. That shapes the design approach: bold, readable, and simple to produce.

Common badge sizes and what they suit

Badge sizes are usually described by the diameter of the finished face. Metric sizes are standard in most of the world, and the US market often uses inch equivalents such as 1 in, 1.25 in, 1.5 in, 2.25 in and 3 in.

If you are starting out, pick one or two sizes. Each size needs its own templates, parts and, if you press your own, its own die set. A range of 58 mm designs plus a cheaper 32 mm or 38 mm series covers most tables well.

Wrap, bleed and the safe zone

This is where most first-time badge designers go wrong. A badge is not a flat print trimmed to size. The printed paper circle is larger than the visible face, because its outer ring wraps around the curved edge of the metal shell and tucks under the back.

A typical template has three zones:

1. Cut line (outer circle): where the paper is cut. Everything inside it is printed.
2. Wrap area (edge ring): between the cut line and the face. This curls around the side and partly underneath. It is visible from an angle, so extend your background color or pattern all the way to the cut line.
3. Safe zone (inner circle): the area you can count on seeing face-on. Keep faces, text, signatures and anything important comfortably inside it, with a few millimeters of breathing room.

As a rough illustration, a 58 mm badge on many systems uses a cut circle somewhere around 68–70 mm across, so roughly 5–6 mm of art per side ends up on the edge. But exact templates vary by manufacturer and press, and even by part supplier for the same size. Always download and use the template from your printer or from the maker of your badge machine. A design built on someone else’s template can come out with a white rim showing or with your character’s chin wrapped round the edge.

File setup: resolution, color mode and templates

Treat each badge as a small print job.

• Canvas size: set the canvas to the template’s full cut size, not the face size. Place the template as a locked guide layer at the top and hide it before export.
• Resolution: 300 dpi at the printed size. For a 70 mm cut circle that is about 827 × 827 px; for a cut circle around 37 mm (a common figure for 25 mm badges), it is around 440 px. Painting at twice that size and scaling down gives cleaner lines.
• Color: paint in RGB, then soft proof against the printer’s CMYK profile. Neon greens, electric blues and bright purples usually print duller, so adjust them by hand before conversion. Our colour theory guide explains gamut and soft proofing.
• Blacks: use the printer’s recommended rich black for large dark areas and pure K black for small text, so it stays crisp.
• Format: send what the printer asks for, usually a flattened PDF or high-quality TIFF/PNG per design, sometimes ganged onto a sheet template.

Designing for a small circle

• Check every design at actual size on screen. Zoom so the face measures its real diameter against a ruler.
• Increase line weights. Lines that look fine on an A4 print can vanish at 32 mm.
• Use high value contrast between character and background so the badge reads from a meter away on a busy table.
• Crop boldly. A face that fills the circle beats a full-body figure that becomes a speck.

For a full stage-by-stage file workflow, from canvas setup to export, see inside a professional digital illustration workflow.

Paper, finishes and back options

Paper

Most badge systems want relatively thin paper so the art wraps cleanly without creasing. Recommendations often fall somewhere around 80–150 gsm, but check your maker’s guidance. Paper that is too thick can bunch at the edges or fail to seat in the shell, and paper that is too thin may show the metal through light colors.

Finishes

The clear top film (often mylar) protects the print. Printers usually offer finish options as a choice of film or paper; if you press your own, specialty films are available from badge part suppliers.

Backs

• Pin back: the standard option, wearable on bags, lanyards and jackets. Cheapest and most familiar.
• Magnet back: for fridges and metal surfaces, and for people who do not want pin holes in clothing. Keep magnets away from small children.
• Mirror back: a pocket mirror with your art on the front, usually at 58 mm or 75 mm. Works well as a slightly higher-priced item.
• Others: keyrings, bottle openers and flat backs exist too, and usually need different parts or presses.

Pin badges are not toys and include a sharp pin and small parts, so label stock accordingly if young children are part of your audience.

Costing and pricing a badge: a worked example

Pricing by gut feeling is the most common way small sellers lose money. Below is a worked example. All figures are illustrative assumptions, not quotes. Replace them with your own printer’s prices, local table fees and shipping costs.

Assumptions

• 150 badges, 58 mm, pin back, gloss, ordered from a print shop as three designs × 50.
• Assumed print price: $0.55 per badge, so $82.50.
• Assumed shipping to you: $15.00.
• Backing cards and resealable bags: assumed $0.06 per badge, so $9.00.
• Table fee: $120 for the weekend. You expect to sell about 250 items in total across all products, so you allocate $0.48 per item.
• Card and e-wallet payment fees: assume about 3% of the sale price.

Unit cost

Setting the price

At an assumed price of $3.00 per badge, each sale contributes about $1.72 after the fully loaded cost. A bundle such as “2 for $5” brings the effective price to $2.50, still leaving about $1.22 per badge. That is roughly 2× (bundle) to 2.3× (single) the fully loaded cost, which is a sensible floor for a product this small.

Three things this example does not include, and you should think about:

• Design time. If a design takes three hours, it needs to sell through several events, or be reused as a print or sticker, to pay for itself.
• Unsold stock. If you sell 90 of 150 badges, your direct cost per badge sold rises from $0.71 to about $1.18. Stock carries over to the next event, but tastes in fandoms change quickly.
• Travel and accommodation. For out-of-town conventions these often dwarf the table fee and belong in your overall event budget.

Display and stall tips

Badges are small, so a busy table can swallow them. Make them easy to see, easy to choose and easy to pay for.

• Use a vertical display. A fabric-covered foam board, cork board or pegboard on a small easel raises badges to eye level. Pin one sample of each design and keep stock under the table.
• Group by series or fandom. Visitors scan for characters they know. Label groups clearly.
• Number every design. A small code under each sample (A1, A2, B1…) speeds up orders and makes it easy to track sales.
• Show prices clearly. One large, readable sign with prices and bundle deals beats tiny tags on each badge.
• Light it. A small clip-on LED lamp helps a lot in dim halls, especially for holographic finishes.
• Keep a “try it” sample of mirror or magnet backs so people can feel the product.
• Take card and e-wallet payments as well as cash, and display the accepted methods.

Packaging

Packaging does three jobs: it protects the badge, it presents it, and it carries your contact details home.

• Backing card: a small printed card with your artist name, social handle or website, and the design name. Punch or slit it so the pin goes through.
• Clear bag: resealable cellophane or OPP bags sized to the card. Measure carefully, because a 58 mm badge on a card needs a noticeably larger bag than the badge alone.
• Bundles: package sets in one bag with a set card. Sets sell well and help clear slower designs alongside popular ones.
• Online orders: if you also sell by mail, add a stiff card or small box. Pins can pierce padded envelopes, and badges can dent in the post.

Inventory tracking

A simple spreadsheet is enough, as long as you use it consistently. Track:

• Design code, name, size, finish and back type
• Quantity ordered, date and unit cost
• Stock at the start of each event, sold per day, and stock remaining
• A reorder threshold, for example reorder when fewer than 10 remain and the design sold at least 15 at the last event

At the table, a tally sheet by design code works when you are busy. Transfer it to the spreadsheet each night. After two or three events you will know your best sellers, your slow movers and roughly how many of each to bring next time. That data is just as useful when deciding which designs to turn into larger prints.

A note on fan art badges

Many convention badges feature characters from anime, games and comics. Fan art is part of convention culture, but it does not stop being someone else’s intellectual property because it is small or cheap. Rights holders’ attitudes vary widely, some conventions have their own rules about selling fan merchandise, and certain franchises are known to enforce their rights actively. Original characters, or a mix of original and fan designs, give you full control over what you sell.

Before printing fan art in quantity, read our fan art vs original art copyright guide and check the specific event’s artist alley rules. This is general information, not legal advice. For specific situations, speak to a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction.

If you would like badge-ready artwork designed for you, with the template, safe zone and print specifications handled, see our custom button badges service.

Frequently asked questions