Custom Lapel Pin Artwork Guidelines

Custom lapel pins are a one-of-a-kind canvas for your original artwork and designs, but working a design onto metal differs from sketching it on paper or in Photoshop. There are physical criteria for what is possible when turning artwork into a custom pin, such as stroke lines and a small display surface. Fortunately, Badges-Pins' art team works with clients every day to optimize their artwork for custom pins. Let's go over the fundamentals of preparing your artwork for custom lapel pins in this post. Related product: Anime Lapel Pin Printing Color Enamel Hard Pins Souvenir.

Outlining Your Pin Design and Adding Stroke Lines

Our lapel pins are die-struck from a custom mold based on the original artwork, and the colored areas are filled with enamel paint after the design is stamped into the metal. Outline each colored part of a design with separate stroke lines in your artwork so that those areas can be individually painted after the design is stamped. When color is added, the stroke lines form borders that keep the color concentrated in a single area. Otherwise, the enamel paint would just flow freely into areas of your custom pin design, similar to Photoshop's paint bucket tool.

If your partitioned areas are narrower than 0.75 pts, the color fill will be too small. Meanwhile, in Photoshop, linework on a pin design must be at least 0.5 pt thick (this should be true in most other art programs). The pin molds simply cannot catch lines or details any smaller than that. Starting with those minimum stroke lines ensures that your vision is faithfully reproduced on the final pin and can save a few days of revisions before going to production.

Colored and Personalized Pins

Color is one of the most important aspects of any custom pin design, so we've compiled the three most important facts about working with color in lapel pins.

Pantone Badges to Color

Your Custom Pin Designs-Pins paints our custom pins in Pantone colors. And we work hard to find Pantone colors that match the colors in a client's artwork. However, chances are you'll know which specific shade or hue of color best matches your original vision before we do. Instead of spending days running color swaps back and forth, selecting the exact Pantone color conversions you want when you send your design to us will save you time that could be better spent deciding how to customize a design.

Remember to Order Your Custom Pin Plating!

The color and appearance of your custom pin plating will be reflected in the raised areas of your pin. Decide on the plating you want early on and consider how gold, silver, or black metal might alter the look and atmosphere of your lapel pin design.

Gradients and shading should be simplified or removed.

Because enamel paint is poured into the outlined details of a design, you cannot add gradients or shaded effects to custom pins. If the original artwork contains shaded details or color gradients, you should remove the shading and replace the gradient with a solid color.

Limit the number of colors in your custom pin design to seven. Keep track of how many colors are in your pin design to keep production costs low and production time short. Badges-Pins offers up to seven free colors in any single design, and we recommend that you keep your color scheme within that limit to save money.

Custom Lapel Pins: Using Text

The majority of custom pins don't have much room for a lot of text or large fonts at the popular sizes of 1" to 2". Making sure that any text on a design is both minimal and readable is therefore imperative. For the majority of designs, the text will be a complement to the primary flair of the design and will help define the mood or personality you're attempting to convey.

Here are some simple methods to improve the legibility of the text on your personalized pin:

1. Contrast the color of your text with the pin's primary colors: For a pin with a lot of dark colors, use bright lettering or dark paint to contrast a light color scheme. If you want to be inventive, you can raise the text on your pin so that it makes use of the pin's natural plating.

2. If you're designing a very intricate custom pin, outline text with a distinct text. Box or another design feature to help it stand out and naturally attract attention. Keep the text brief and to the point to maximize your pin size and ensure that it can be read easily. Most pins should, in our opinion, use no more than a few words or a brief phrase.

All text should be proofread because spelling mistakes are still all too common, even in the post-spellcheck era. It's crucial to proofread any text you incorporate into a pin design to prevent a major headache later. Not to mention that you will be more familiar with spelling than we are if you're adding a name or a distinctive quote.

Our art team at Badges-Pins collaborates daily with clients to design, proof, and revise artwork for striking custom pins. With more than ten years of experience, the team can optimize your vision for almost any pin design, from fully rendered art to quick sketches on a napkin.