Thursday, August 9, 2007

Stick it to me!


{Buttons from Prickie.com}

For the love of buttons, pins, badges... whatever-you-call-them... they seem to be everywhere. Here's our quick rundown of re-revolution of buttons.

A couple books about the phenomenon have recently hit store shelves: Badge/Button/Pin in the US and I (Heart) Buttons in the UK. The obsession is clearly not coast-specific.





Buttons are a fantastic branding and marketing tool, whether they are for a big client or a small craft show. People love buttons, they're inexpensive and they double as free advertising. I can't say enough good things about the little 1.25" shiny disks of joy!

If you want to become your own button-making enterprise, do not under any circumstance buy a Badge-A-Minit sub-$100US button maker. They are a waste of money. I speak with some authority about this. I average three crappy buttons to every one good one ratio which is wasteful and just plain annoying. If you're going to manfucature large quantities of buttons on your own, spend at least $300US for a 1.25" machine.

If you want to hire someone to turn your logo or art into a button, I highly recommend Busy Beaver, the queen of the cottage industry.

To acquire some artful button-fun, check out:
Pinsetter
Prickie
Kool Badges

3 comments:

John said...

i have to agree about the Badge-A-Minit. i too have cursed the bejesus out of my hand-operated 2.25" button maker. out of shear desperation, i figured out a retarded way to fix it, though it makes the process take a lot more than a minit. the clear plastic disc always shifts off center which causes the metal ring to not grab the entire circumference. so i pop out the the metal backing and reset the plastic disc so that it's centered. i use mine to make nifty mirrored keychains.

Anonymous said...

Cool tip, John. The trouble I have is that if I do not apply the exact amount of pressure, the button will not seal properly, or it will get crushed. Its definitely time to upgrade. Thanks for commenting.

John Large said...

Hey thanks for giving out site a link in your blog. Really appreciate it. As a mom & pop business the links really help us out :)

Keep up the Button Badge Love

Vicki & John
www.koolbadges.com owners