Custom Pin-Back Buttons for Ronkonkoma, New York

"Our group is based in Ronkonkoma, and the lake just up the road carries almost the same name, so how do we make sure a button reads the way we mean it?" That question comes up on this page more than any other, and the honest answer is that the button itself has to do the work. A round badge gives you one small circle of full colour artwork and nothing else. There is no second line of context, no subtitle underneath, no hover text. Whatever you put inside the circle is the entire message, so the wording, the spelling and the amount of space you leave around it are worth ten minutes of thought before you upload anything.

Two names, one circle of artwork

Lake Ronkonkoma sits 2.3 miles from you and shares the same name root, which means anything printed for one place can be read as belonging to the other. On a street corner, on a jacket, at a folding table outside a supermarket, nobody gets to ask a follow up question. They read the button once and move on.

The practical fix is usually punctuation and hierarchy rather than extra words. Put the place name on its own line at the largest size the circle allows, and let everything else sit smaller and underneath it. If the distinction genuinely matters to your message, spell it out in full rather than abbreviating, because an abbreviation on a badge this size invites the reader to fill in the blank themselves. If it does not matter, leave the place name off and let the message carry the button. We print what you send either way, but this is the single decision people here most often wish they had made differently.

What the five sizes actually give you

There are five round sizes and nothing else: 1 inch, 1.25 inch, 1.5 inch, 2.25 inch and 3 inch.

The 1.5 inch is the classic lapel badge. It holds a short phrase, a name, a logo mark, or a name plus one small line beneath it. Push past that and the type gets too small to read at arm's length.

The 2.25 inch is the size most orders land on. It carries a name and a line of supporting text comfortably, or a logo with room to breathe around it. If you are undecided, this is the one to pick.

The 3 inch is a statement piece. It reads across a room, it takes a photograph or an illustration without crowding, and it is heavy enough on a thin shirt that people tend to pin it to a bag or a jacket instead.

Nothing stops you putting all five sizes on one order. Each size is billed at its own band, set by its own count.

Working out what an order costs

Two designs at the same size count as one quantity for the discount. Ten and a thousand of one size are not the same rate any more: ten pays the listed rate, and a thousand of a single size is where a quote takes over from an automatic price. Two steps instead of one: find the band for that size's count, then multiply.

• The 1 inch $1.49 each
• The 1.25 inch $1.69 each
• The 1.5 inch $1.89 each
• The 2.25 inch $1.99 each
• The 3 inch $2.49 each

A worked example. One hundred of the 1.5 inch button at $1.51 each, the 100 to 249 band, earned by that size's own count, is $151.00 in buttons. Flat shipping on an order of that size is $9.99, which brings it to $160.99 before tax.

Shipping is a flat tier based on the total number of buttons on the order, not on how many designs or sizes you split them across:

• up to 100 buttons $9.99
• up to 250 buttons $14.99
• up to 500 buttons $19.99
• up to 1000 buttons $24.99

The one hundred button line

There is a step on the buttons and a step on the postage, and they are not the same step. That makes the boundaries worth watching. One hundred buttons ships at $9.99. One hundred and one buttons ships at $14.99, because the order has crossed into the next tier.

So if you are sitting at ninety or ninety five and thinking about rounding up, round up to one hundred and stop there. And if you are at a hundred and five, you have paid the higher shipping regardless, so you may as well take the count up toward the top of that tier rather than leave it stranded just over the line.

Preparing artwork for a full colour print

Upload full colour artwork and we print it as sent. A few things that save trouble. Keep important text and any part of a logo you care about away from the outer edge, because the printed disc wraps around the rim of the badge and the outermost band curves out of direct view. Centre the design in a square rather than a rectangle, since the crop is round. Solid backgrounds behave better than faint gradients at these sizes. And if you are ordering two designs, look at them side by side at actual size before you commit, not zoomed in on a screen, because what reads cleanly at 400 percent can turn to mush at 1.5 inches.

Where you are in relation to us

The town lies 14.5 miles east of us in a straight line, in Suffolk County, inside the Town of Brookhaven, under ZIP code 11779. Straight line, not drive time.

We cover the surrounding places on the same terms: Islandia at 1.7 miles, the lake of the same name at 2.3 miles, Bohemia and Nesconset both at 2.7 miles, and Lake Grove at 3.3 miles. Local pickup costs nothing, so the shipping tiers above only apply if you want the box brought to you instead.

Who tends to order these

The volunteer running a petition table. You want the 1.5 inch, one design, the message short enough to read from four feet away. A hundred of them at $1.51 each covers a table and a handful of people wearing them, and it keeps you inside the first shipping tier.

The candidate ordering for a whole slate. Multiple designs on one order cost the same per button as a single design would, and the shipping tier is set by the total count across all of them. So there is no reason to place separate orders per design, and a good reason not to.

The civic association or school group. You are usually after the 2.25 inch, since it takes a crest or a logo without the detail collapsing. Budget from the rate table and the tier, and you will not be surprised at checkout.

The treasurer watching every line. The published band rate means your estimate is arithmetic rather than a guess. Multiply the count by the size price, add one shipping figure, and that is the order before tax.

Questions we get asked

Can one Ronkonkoma order include two different designs without the price going up? Yes. Both the size and the count move the per button figure, and neither one changes what the other does. Two designs at 1.5 inch cost $1.89 each, exactly as one design would.

We are at one hundred buttons for our Ronkonkoma table. What does adding ten more cost?

The first break, and what earns it

$9.99 to $14.99, because anything over one hundred sits in the up to 250 tier.

Our Ronkonkoma design has to be distinguished from the lake of the same name. Can you put both names on one button? You can put anything on the button that you send us, and we print it as supplied. At 1.5 inch two place names will crowd each other, so if both must appear, order the 2.25 inch or the 3 inch and give the type room.

What is shipping on three hundred buttons going to Ronkonkoma? $19.99. Keeping it on one order matters twice now, once for the single shipping charge and once for the combined count that sets each size's rate.

If our Ronkonkoma group mixes 1.5 inch and 3 inch buttons, how is the total worked out? Each size is charged at its own rate, worked out from its own count, $1.89 and $2.49 each, and then one shipping tier is applied to the combined number of buttons on the order.