21
Feb *More from the Badge Museum
By: IT Admin
Back in the day…
These were some of the first commercial button badges we ever made – back in the 1970s.
Check out the logos – Bank of NSW became Westpac, Penfolds Stationery no longer exists under that name, Space Invaders was at the cutting edge of computer technology and Kodak made prints from your film negatives!
Mostly these were in one or two colours because full colour printing (CMYK) was still a luxury beyond the badgemaker’s budget.
We’ve come a long way, baby. Just about every badge and magnet we now produce is in dazzling glorious full colour, made right in our own factory!
Printing badges in the early days was mostly done with a photocopier and coloured paper for a background.
Needless to say, this was somewhat limiting, but served a purpose for many promotional companies and advertising agencies.
Some campaigns had a bigger budget and we were able to shop around the printing industry till we found a reasonable deal – we still did all the artwork and colour separations by hand.
Nowadays of course the artwork is all electronic and all under our own roof. Colour printing is the norm (though we can still do special colours including metallic and fluoro) and is produced on our high-speed offset and digital presses.
Those were the days!
