Custom Pin-Back Buttons for East Farmingdale, New York

Farmingdale sits about a mile and a half away and South Farmingdale a little under two, so three places sharing one name root are packed into a very short radius. That turns into a real design question the moment you are putting words on something two and a quarter inches across. A club in East Farmingdale that prints only the family name on its pins hands every member a small ambiguity to carry around, and the fix costs nothing, because a button is priced by its size and not by how many letters you put on it.

The name is the first thing to settle

Write the full name. It sounds obvious until you are laying out a crest, a founding year and a line of text inside a circle, and the first word is the one that looks easiest to drop. Organisers who drop it end up with a pin that could belong to any one of three groups, and members who joined from a neighbouring place often assume the pin is not theirs.

There are a few ways to handle it without crowding the face of the button. Curving the full name along the top edge and putting the group name in the middle reads cleanly at every size we make. Setting the first word smaller than the second works too, as long as it is still legible. Some societies solve it with a ZIP code, and 11735 is a reasonable anchor if your layout has room for five characters and not for eleven. Others set the county name underneath, which separates a Suffolk County group from anything carrying a similar name on the Nassau side of the line. None of these choices changes what you pay.

Five sizes, and what each one is really for

We make round pin-back buttons in five sizes and nothing else.

The 1.5 inch button is $1.89 each. It holds a short name, a simple mark, or a single word in strong type. It is the size most clubs reach for when every member needs one and the pin is meant to sit on a lapel without dominating it.

The 2.25 inch button is $1.99 each. This is the workhorse for society pins, because it fits a crest plus a line of text, or a name plus a year, without forcing the type down to a size people have to squint at.

The 3 inch button is $2.49 each. Use it when the design has real detail: a full emblem, several lines, a photograph, an officer title under a name.

All five are printed in full colour from artwork you upload, so the number of inks in your design is not a cost factor. A two colour crest and a full photograph cost the same at the same size.

A hundred buttons, priced out

Here is a run the way a club organiser would actually order it. One hundred of the 1.5 inch button at $1.51 each, which is the 100 to 249 rate, is $151.00 in buttons. Flat shipping for an order that size is $9.99. The order comes to $160.99 before tax.

The number to hold onto is the $1.89. It is the price of one button and it is the price of every button. The figure listed is what 1 to 99 of that size costs each. If you are used to quoting a committee a range that depends on how many people say yes, you can stop doing that here: multiply, and you have the figure.

Where the total does move

Shipping is flat, but it steps, and it steps on the total number of buttons on the order. Up to 100 buttons is $9.99. Up to 250 is $14.99. Up to 500 is $19.99. Up to 1000 is $24.99.

That makes 100 an interesting number. At exactly 100 you are sitting on the top of the first tier. Order 101 and every button drops to $1.51, because 101 clears the first break, while shipping moves to $14.99. Nothing is wrong with crossing the line. It is simply worth knowing that the extra button carries $5.00 of shipping step with it, so if your roster is hovering around a hundred it is worth deciding deliberately rather than by accident. The same logic sits at 250 and at 500.

Artwork at pin size

A circle is an unforgiving frame. Thin outlines close up, fine serifs get lost, and anything that runs to the edge of your file will curve around the rim where nobody reads it. Keep the type and the mark inside a comfortable margin and let the outer band carry colour rather than information.

Photographs work, but tight crops work better than wide ones. A face that fills the 3 inch button reads; the same photograph shrunk to 1.5 inch reads as a shape. If you are torn between sizes for a photographic design, the larger one is usually the right call.

Ten miles of straight line

East Farmingdale is 10.2 miles south of the shop in a straight line. That is distance on a map rather than time on a road, and for a mail order it mostly tells you that we are not working at arm's length from a place we have never heard of. It also puts you within a couple of miles of several places we cover: Farmingdale at 1.5 miles, South Farmingdale at 1.9, North Amityville at 2.2, North Lindenhurst and Old Bethpage at 2.6 each. Clubs whose membership spreads across that radius are the normal case, not the exception.

Who tends to place these orders

Club secretaries. You are ordering against a roster, you know the headcount to within a few people, and you need a number to put in front of a committee. The published band rate means the number you quote is the number, whatever the roster does between now and the vote.

Society officers running an annual pin. You want the same design every year with one element changed, usually a date. Keep a master file with that element on its own layer and the yearly reorder becomes a single small edit.

Volunteer coordinators. Your group is a mix of people from East Farmingdale and from the places around it, and you want everyone wearing the same thing. One design, full name spelled out, one size for everybody.

Anyone running a membership drive. You are handing pins to people who are not members yet, so the pin has to say what the group is, not just who it is. That usually means the 2.25 inch, because a name alone is not enough and a name plus a purpose will not fit on the smallest one.

Questions we get asked

Our club meets in East Farmingdale but plenty of members live in Farmingdale. Should the pin say both? No. Put the meeting place on the pin and leave it at that. Two place names in a circle fight each other, and members do not read the pin as a statement of where they live.

We need 100 of the 1.5 inch for an East Farmingdale club night. What is the total? $151.00 for the buttons plus $9.99 flat shipping, which is $160.99 before tax.

If our East Farmingdale roster grows past 100, does the per button price change? It does now. 100 of one size earns 20 percent off, and it comes off every button of that size rather than only the ones above the line. The rate steps at three counts and holds level between them. The rate band answers to one size's count and the shipping tier answers to the total.

Which size should an East Farmingdale society pin be if it carries a crest and a line of text? The 2.25 inch at $1.99 each. The 1.5 inch will hold the crest or the text, but rarely both at a size people can read. Go to the 3 inch if the crest has fine internal detail. Two more sizes sit below: a 1 inch at $1.49 and a 1.25 inch at $1.69.

Can an East Farmingdale group order 500 and get a better rate per button? Yes, and the saving applies to the whole run of that size. 500 of the 2.25 inch is $1.39 each rather than $1.99, because 500 sits in the 500 to 999 band. 20 of the 2.25 inch is $1.99 each and 500 of the same size is $1.39 each, because 500 lands in the 500 to 999 band. At that quantity the flat shipping tier is $19.99.