# The side of a badge nobody thinks to look at

> The reverse of a pin badge, printed at actual size high on the left chest — a joke that lands for somebody who's crimped a rim themselves.

August 21, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-badge-back-and-the-pin

On oxblood, high on the left chest and at actual badge size, the reverse of a small round pin. The
folded paper edge wraps under a crimped metal rim. A flat spring-steel pin lies across it at a
slight angle, hooked into a small catch. A sliver of colour shows where the front design wraps
around the edge, and nothing else on the garment is printed at all.

This is the side of a badge that everyone who's ever made one knows, and almost nobody who's just
worn one has seen.

## Why print the back instead of the front?

Because the back is the part that proves somebody actually assembled the thing.

Anyone can print a circle. The reverse — folded paper, a crimped rim, a pin held on with a hook
and a spring — exists in this exact form because a badge press closed on it. Printing it is a
specific joke: it reads as an odd design choice to a stranger and as a fully documented
manufacturing step to anyone who's fed blanks through a press themselves.

## Why does this need to print at actual size?

Because the size is the whole gag.

A reverse like this reads as *a badge's back* at the size a badge actually is, and not much
bigger. Enlarged, it stops being a recognisable object and turns into an abstract diagram of a rim
and a spring — correct in every detail and legible to nobody. At true scale, high on the chest, it
sits
roughly where a badge would be pinned, which is the joke completing itself.

## What does the reverse actually show?

The whole method in one glance: a sheet of paper wrapped and folded under a metal rim, the rim
crimped shut around it, and a pin held on by a hook rather than glued or welded. Nothing about it
is decorative — every line on the back is there because the badge has to survive being worn.

The front gets the emblem. The back gets the engineering, and almost nobody ever turns one over to
check.

## Can the sliver of colour reference a real badge's front?

If a specific badge's front is the point, licensing it is the straightforward route — badge
artwork belongs to whoever drew it, the same as any other artwork, and permission is usually
easier to get than people assume.

If it isn't the point, the sliver works better invented: a single unidentified edge of colour is
more intriguing than a recognisable one, because it leaves the front to the imagination instead of
answering the question outright.

## Who is this actually for?

Anyone who's made a run of badges themselves, or watched somebody else do it — the habit of doing
short runs by hand that also produces [a fraction like 37 of 50 written in
pencil](/stories/hand-numbered-thirty-seven-of-fifty). It's a private joke for people who know
what a crimped rim costs in time and equipment, and it doesn't need explaining to anyone else.

It sits next to [the same private-mark logic a hand-sewn patch
uses](/stories/the-patch-sewn-on-by-hand), on a smaller and stranger object.

## Isn't printing hardware instead of a graphic a strange choice?

It reads that way if the intended audience is everyone. For the people who get the joke, it's the
most specific thing on the page — more specific than any front design could be, because fronts get
photographed and copied, and the back rarely does. Almost nothing about a badge's reverse ever ends
up online.

## Does it print well at this scale?

Yes, with a short palette and clean edges. The crimped rim and the pin are both hard-edged forms —
metal reads well as flat colour with a defined highlight line, and there's little here that needs
a gradient. [Compare the equally small mark on the back of a
hand](/stories/the-stamp-on-the-back-of-a-hand): both rely on being printed small and precise
rather than loud.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the badge at [JustOG](/) — what the front would have shown, and how worn the rim should
look. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made
to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Nobody photographs the back of a badge. This one gets worn instead.