Are you an event organizer? Throwing a party? Do you want to help people strike up a conversation? That’s what Icebreakertags™ are for. Similar to name tags, people attach these conversation-starters to their clothes with a safety pin, but instead of a name, they answer a question.
It’s an idea I had while organizing CreativeMornings, a monthly breakfast lecture series here in New York. Icebreakertags™ make it easy to strike up a conversation with someone, even at 8.30am!
As I’ve seen a lot of buzz about the idea on Twitter, I figured why not build a site that let’s anyone use and customize them their liking. So, here it is, Icebreakertags.com let’s you generate your own icebreaktertag for your next party, conference or other gathering. Type directly into the tag to add your name/twitter/prompt, insert a good question, customize it with your logo or any graphic of your choice, and hit print. It will then generate a printout with 10 tags on it. Fun, no?
A big thank you to Ian Storm Taylor, our Studiomates Intern for building the site!
Make sure to add photos of your best tags to the Icebreakertag Flickr Group.
Happy conversing!
Well done on the new site Tina. It’s a great idea. This certainly outdoes the typical name tag. I’m sure Event Organisers will jump on this.
Jan 18th, 2011 / 10:40 am
I’m interested in how you were able to generate a printable sheet of tags based on variable user inputs. I have an idea for a website that would require PDF generation via SVG, which may be similar to what you did here. Any resources or people to talk to would be greatly appreciated! (I already @replied Ian.)
Jan 18th, 2011 / 11:08 am
Hey Matt,
The way it’s done is really simple (and probably won’t help you much with PDF generation haha). The tags that you see in the print screen are always there, just underneath #overlay, which gets hidden by the print stylesheet. If you hide #overlay with the Web Inspector you should see them. And as for the values, they are just grabbed from the main form and distributed to the rest of the tags with jQuery.
Probably not much help, although you can always hit print and choose “Save as PDF…” in Safari. Good luck!
Jan 18th, 2011 / 11:32 am
Thank you Tina and Ian for building this tool! That’s exactly what I was hoping for.
Jan 18th, 2011 / 12:01 pm
Thank you Tina. This is awesome!
Jan 18th, 2011 / 1:22 pm
Several of us can’t view your new offering in the most up to date version of IE 8? The view that suggests the browser is old and needs updating is kind of a 90’s thing to do – is not nice! Especially since it fails to inform us or link to the browser necessary to view it.
Jan 18th, 2011 / 1:26 pm
Mateo, I am sorry your frustrated with our IE message. Ever considered Chrome, Firefox or Safari?
Jan 18th, 2011 / 3:01 pm
This is full on awesome.
Jan 18th, 2011 / 4:39 pm
These are great! I feel like I want to use them at my next party! Would that be too geeky?
-Jordana
Jan 18th, 2011 / 5:54 pm
thank you very much, i was thinking how to make a doc to use this idea like… last night, you read my mind. thank you again and greetings from mexico.
Jan 18th, 2011 / 6:36 pm
thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you
Jan 19th, 2011 / 6:56 am
Very cool idea. Just may have to use this at our next event
Jan 19th, 2011 / 11:52 am
Great idea! Love the wording! »icebreaker tag«
Thanks for the nice online service.
Greets from Germany!
Jan 20th, 2011 / 10:55 am
This is awesome!
Jan 21st, 2011 / 8:13 am
What a great idea! Thankyou :)
Jan 24th, 2011 / 3:49 pm
I am the coordinator of a big WordPress Meetup in Atlanta. Love this idea as a way to show people that it is really okay to strike up a convo with anyone. I am not shy but some people need a bit of a nudge. This will help!
Jan 25th, 2011 / 7:46 am
I love the Icebreaker Tags and would love to use them at our client event in October. However I don’t know which tags to buy, that I can print them on. Can anybody help me?
Aug 11th, 2014 / 9:49 am