Thinking beyond the Sharpie marker

The Sharpie marker and pack of labels have served event organizers well for generations. These days, though, everyone carries a powerful computer in their pocket, and everything from our printers to our lights are connected to the Internet. What if we looked beyond the humble Sharpie, and reimagined name badges for the modern age? That’s what we set out to do with Badger.

A new approach to name badges

We took a spiffy Brother label printer and paired it with a fun and easy-to-use mobile web app you can launch on your own phone, simply by scanning a QR code. From there, you can browse through a variety of fun, branded designs, add your name and title—even your photo if you want—and have a freshly printed name badge within seconds. No app to install, no complex setup.

Who made this?

Badger is a side project of Cody Mikol, Kostas Nasis, and YingYing Zhang. We all design and build digital products in our professional lives, but occasionally like to work on something a little bit different, to sharpen our skills and gain exposure to new technologies. Through Badger we explored:

• a custom, non-standard use of a label printer, and the creation of custom-designed labels
• the use of QR codes to launch a unique web app experience meant to be used on the spot
• a fun badge design experience on the mobile web, allowing you to customize your name badge and even add your own photo
• the bridging of your personal mobile device and an onsite printer, enabling a user to design something on their phone and have it immediately materialize in print.

Where can I get one?

Badger was developed as a technology demo, not a commercial product, but if you think a similar solution would be a good fit for your organization, we’d be happy to chat. Email us!