Creating one digital badge is relatively easy – creating many can get quite hard, harder still if you want to roll out the ability to give badges to others within your organisation.

If you’re creating more than one badge, you’ll find you need to define your digital badge guidelines – it’s like having a brand book but for badges.

One organisation that’s an expert at badges is the Girl Guiding association – their guidelines on how to create a bespoke badge are worth reading to see how it’s done.

It’s quite common for organisations to leave badge design to their visual design team, however it is important that business users are involved in the strategic visual decisions – what stays the same for each badge, and what differs. Badges once given can be displayed anywhere so are an important visual marker of your success tracking program, getting them wrong or designing them badly can undermine confidence in your core program itself.

 

In this post, I want to signpost some of the key visual language decisions you need to make when designing your badges. Your written guidelines should  then state clearly which of these can be changed and which need to remain the same for each new badge.

Shape

Shape is important in badges – while the most common are circles, squares and shields, any shape can be the canvas for your badge, even a star!

Border

The border can frame the badge by being a different colour from the main shape. It could even support text within it.

Banner

Banners are often placed inside, above or below the shape. The banner will usually include text to explain the badge.

Central Icon

Badges often have a clear icon that summarises the activity for which the badge was awarded.

Typography

Many badges include quite a bit of text to explain what they are for, the font you choose should reflect your brand. Be aware that badges are often shown at small resolutions so readability is important.

Colour

For me colour shouldn’t be used to mean too much – digital badges are inherently global and colour can have a very subjective meaning – that’s not to say it won’t be appropriate to use it in some circumstances.

Decoration

Adorning your badge with a serated edge, a repeating background pattern, an extra icon or perhaps a double border can give your badge a different feel.

Rating

Rating stars are often used within badge design to denote achievement level.

In terms of text / icons that you need to fit onto a badge consider the following:

Institution

The stamp of the institution awarding the badge.

Date

Badges may be awarded for all time or they could represent achievements for a certain time period.

Achievement

The achievement or the activity for which the badge was earned.

Level

The level at which the badge was earned

Category

Your overall categorisation for the badge.

Qualifier

The region, locality for which the badge was earned.

So, there’s plenty of permutations for your digital badge design!

Spending some time in advance defining what you keep standard and what you change each time will help you.

Don’t forget, once your badge is defined you can use them at scale by hosting the badge itself on Credly.com and use Rise.global to automate distribution based on your scoring criteria.