Follow Nearly 40 Years of Dragon Con Art History

As someone who counts my Dragon Con attendance in decades now, it’s been fun to watch the con evolve and change over time, from the event tracks to the fan “cults” that seem to spawn every year, some lasting longer than others. Some easy (and “free”) pieces of annual memorabilia are your badge and program. We’ve kept most of both of ours (despite best efforts, some seem to have gone to the winds), and some folks wear all of their badges to con every year.

A few years ago, I started trying to track down the art and artists from every year. When I was down to a handful of missing pieces, I discovered other folks had not only already done the work, but also had a robust discussion and trading group, now the Dragon Con Collectibles Exchange on Facebook. Heather Stephenson created it 2017 trying to complete her hotel key collection. (More on those in a future post!) The group now has more than 650 members.

“[They are] people who love Dragon Con, its history, and collecting that history,” group c0-owner Andrew Hansen told me. “The group itself has individuals who collect all the various form of Dragon Con memorabilia such as: hotel cards, pins, magnets, program guides, lanyards, badges, and all things nerdy and Dragon Con related. Any small token that glancing at years later can take you back to that memory of the fun, friends, and great times you had at Dragon Con.”

My sincere thanks to Heather, Andrew, and the other group members who helped me complete my own lists and some of the images linked below. Do you know who created the badge art for 1987 or 1988? Please reach out to me or the community and let us all know!

How to read this table

• Links in the “Badge art” column are to photos of the actual badges.
• Where available, links under “Program cover art” show the original artwork and artist’s websites.
• The links under “Program cover” are to the images of the program covers themselves, which you can also flip through in the carousel at the bottom of this post.

Browse the program covers in order: