Artwork Information

• Submitting Artwork • Engraving vs Imprinting •

Submitting Artwork

Submitting artwork to be engraved: Engraving is different from printing processes that most of us are familiar with. Where your printer may print in full color, or black and white with many shades of gray, the engraving process works in black and white only. If you are ordering for a company or school, check with your art or communications department for advice on how to provide artwork that meets the following requirements:

• Black and white tiff (PC only - we cannot process Mac files). This tiff file must contain "black and white camera ready art." By this, we mean that the artwork must be clear, sharp line artwork, without ragged, jagged edges. A faxed image would likely not make this requirement. Black and white means exactly that - black and white only (no shades of gray). The artwork should not contain any "dithering" or "halftones". The best engraved logos come from artwork that is clean and simple.
• The size of the image in the file should be twice the size of the image to be engraved.
• A vector format file would work best, as the image could be sized at will with no loss of detail.

You may upload your logo onto our server, or you can email your artwork as an attachment, and we'll be happy to analyze it at no charge, and will let you know whether it would be a good candidate for engraving. We will also let you know if engraving the artwork would increase the cost of the award(s) you are considering; some logos take more time and resources than others, so we cannot give a flat fee for this and be fair to everyone. Typically, though, there are no additional costs unless the artwork does not meet the requirements listed above.

Submitting artwork to be imprinted: We now have the capabilities to imprint your custom logo in full color on a trophy or plaque plate, using a process very similar to the type of printing most of us are familiar with. We can accept jpg or gif files for imprinting, but note that these types of images are compressed - files in tiff or any other non-compressed format work better. Vector files work best, as they can be resized with no loss in quality. Obviously, the higher quality image we have to work with, the better the quality will be of the finished product. Please ensure that when printed, your artwork will be large enough to be a good fit on the item you would like it imprinted upon. As with engraved logos, you may upload your logo onto our server, or you can email your artwork as an attachment, and we'll be happy to analyze it at no charge.

Please see our Frequently Asked Questions page for more information.

Engraving vs Imprinting

At Affordable Trophies, we specialize in creating custom awards. We can engrave the text you need to commemorate an important event, and we can embellish many awards with logos.

We have many logos to choose from, or we can engrave or imprint your logo. The picture below shows samples of engraving and imprinting. Generally, only very simple logos can be engraved, and those that are complex or have multiple colors look best imprinted. Engraving is not "better" than imprinting, nor is the reverse true - they are different processes, and which one would work out better depends on the situation. Generally speaking, our imprinting process woulds best if the logo is desired on a gold, white or silver plate, and/or the logo contains many shades of colors; engraving is better when a black plate with gold lettering is desired, and the logo is a vector file or a simple black and white (no shades of gray) image. See the Submitting Artwork section above for details regarding the image requirements for engraving or imprinting your logo.