Best Custom Event Badges in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh surprises people, and planners who book it once tend to come back. The convention center is one of the greenest buildings of its kind anywhere, the whole downtown is walkable, and the city looks like nowhere else in America when you come out of the tunnel and the skyline appears all at once. Here is what to know about badges for a Pittsburgh event, and where to send your attendees when the sessions wrap.

Planning an event in Pittsburgh

The David L. Lawrence Convention Center sits on the Allegheny riverfront with around 300,000 square feet of exhibit space, and it was the first convention center in the world to earn LEED Gold certification. That matters more than a plaque usually would, because if your organization reports on event sustainability, the venue itself does a meaningful share of the work for you before you order a single thing.

Downtown Pittsburgh is compact enough that most of it is a walk. The Westin connects to the convention center directly, and the Omni William Penn, the Fairmont, and the Kimpton Hotel Monaco are all within a few blocks in the Golden Triangle. For anything arena-scale, PPG Paints Arena is a short ride up the hill, and groups after something with more character use the Carnegie Museums in Oakland or the Heinz History Center in the Strip District.

Spring and fall are the strong seasons. Summer works fine and the riverfronts are at their best, but winter is genuinely grey here, and a February program needs your attendees to have reasons to leave the hotel. The city's university and health system presence means a steady run of medical, academic, and technology meetings year round.

Choosing badges for a Pittsburgh event

The practical issue here is weather swing. Pittsburgh can hand you a damp forty-degree morning and a warm afternoon in the same day, and attendees walking between downtown hotels and the convention center will be in and out of it constantly. Damp coats, damp air, and repeated handling are exactly the cycle that softens uncoated paper and tears it out at the slot punch by day three.

• Multi-day conventions: 30 mil plastic handles four days of handling, re-entry scans, and river-valley damp without degrading.
• Pre-registered conferences: 18 pt paper gives you full-color branding at the lowest cost per badge once your list is locked.
• Winter and early spring programs: Plastic, or paper in a rigid holder. Wet coats and badges are a bad combination.
• Sustainability-reporting events: Recyclable paper stock and rPET lanyards pair naturally with a LEED Gold venue, and it is an easy line item to document.
• Staff and crew: The 2.125 x 3.375 mini reads at a glance and stays out of the way on a busy floor.

Ordering timeline

Custom badges print within 5 business days of proof approval, then ship. Custom lanyards run 10 to 12 business days after proof approval plus shipping, so lanyard artwork is the piece to finalize first. Work backward from your in-hands date rather than your show date, and confirm the convention center's receiving window before you schedule delivery.

Things to do in Pittsburgh

Start with the view, because it is the thing people remember. The Duquesne Incline hauls you up Mount Washington in a wooden cable car from 1877, and the overlook at the top takes in all three rivers and the entire skyline at once. It is a twenty minute trip and the single best thing you can tell an attendee with a free hour.

The museums punch far above the city's size. The Andy Warhol Museum on the North Shore is the largest single-artist museum in North America, the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History in Oakland share one enormous building, and the Mattress Factory on the North Side does room-sized installation art in a converted warehouse. Phipps Conservatory in Schenley Park is glass, Victorian, and beautiful in any weather.

The Strip District is where to send people hungry. It is a few blocks of produce markets, Italian delis, spice shops, and Primanti Brothers, whose sandwich comes with fries and slaw inside it and is not up for debate. Beyond that, Lawrenceville along Butler Street has most of the city's better new restaurants, and Bloomfield is the old Italian neighborhood that still delivers. If your dates line up with a Steelers, Penguins, or Pirates home game, take the group. PNC Park has the best skyline view of any ballpark in the country and it is not particularly close.

Give your Pittsburgh attendees a badge that holds up through four days of river weather, and a city that will win them over whether or not you help.

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FAQs: Event Badges & Things to Do in Pittsburgh, PA