How To Design Enamel Pins

When you look at enamel pins, you must think that it is a great work of art that surely a designer or artist would have made. If you have ever thought about designing custom enamel pins, you might think about hiring a designer to do it for you. It may surprise you, but you can actually design enamel pins on your own! Yes, it is true. Not only can you design your own enamel pins, but you can also get them made from an enamel pin factory.

The only thing you can’t do is manufacture your customer enamel pin on your own, but you can get them ready to send to a manufacturer for production. Let’s discuss how to design enamel pins and get them ready to be printed and manufactured. It won’t take too much of your time, and you will be able to acquire a valuable skill.

Why Would You Need to Design Enamel Pins?

If you have ever bought and worn an enamel pin, then you would know that it is always used to commemorate or celebrate a special occasion or event, to show solidarity or support a cause, organization, or charity. There are thousands of different enamel pins you can find out there, whether you want to support your favorite football team in a tournament or resound your support with cancer patients.

Designing custom enamel pins has become largely popular all over the world, and you can even find designers who specialize in doing this sort of work. You can tell them what you need designed, and they will come up with the design quickly, making it ready to be sent to the manufacturer for production. Even renowned designers have used the medium of custom enamel pins on special occasions in history.

If you can’t find the design for something special in your life, or a special event in your community, then you might want to design it yourself. Since you have the design, or an idea, in your mind, you can best design it, rather than explaining it to a designer. Once you learn the art of designing enamel pins, you would want to try your hand at new and unique designs as well.

Understand the Basics

First, you need to understand the dos and don’ts of enamel pin designing, as well as the pros and cons of the process. Designing an enamel pin is quite different from drawing or sketching anything else, because you have limitations in terms of colors and detailing.

The first thing you can do is to determine the electroplating color, which is the base color of your pin before it is filled with enameled paints.

Enamel pins contain raised and lowered areas in which enamel can be filled, and the rest has the color which is electroplated on to the metal. Some of the common electroplating colors include gold, bright nickel, sandfrost, bright bronze, antique silver, and many others. If you have a design that has black lines, you can make use of black nickel electroplating. Choosing the electroplating color will make it easier for you to tell the manufacturer what you need, and also include it into the design.

The first thing to remember is that the sections inside your design that have to be colored differently should be denoted by black lines, because the production process identifies black lines as a partition. Make sure that your designs are as simple as possible, since they will only be displayed on a medium of 1 or 2 inches, and most of the intricate details might be lost in it. At such a small size, the lines will start to blend with each other, which isn’t something that you would like.

Last but not least, also keep in mind that the price for your enamel pin will be determined by its size and not its design. Make sure you have determined the pin size beforehand and create your design accordingly.

Starting the Designing Phase

Generally, most people draw the design on a piece of paper and once they are done, they scan the final result into a PDF file. However, this method doesn’t produce high-quality designs.

The other method is to use a digital designing application, such as Adobe Illustrator, to create the design and save it as PDF. Once this is done, you can send it to the enamel pin factory and they will convert it to a production mock-up.

You can also combine the two methods and use a graphic tablet and to draw the design you want. This way, you won’t have to worry about sketching the design and getting a low-quality enamel pin for it. If you don’t want to spend money on a graphic tablet, you can get a stylus for your smartphone or tablet, and download a good designing app.

The design process starts with choosing a container for the design, and working your way down from them. Although squares and circles are most commonly used, you can choose an abstract shape for more effect. You can start by tracing the outer border of the artwork, and then add more layers to your design. This will help you get a more defined and complete image. Whether you are sketching the design on paper or using a digital design application, the initial stages remain the same.

The next step is to add more detailing to your artwork, which involves adding smaller lines and shapes to give the design more depth. Make sure to keep the layers larger than 2mm, so that they easily fit onto the small surface of the enamel pin.

Last but not least, make sure to mark the lines inside your design which will be raised from the surface of the enamel pin, because you have to adorn them in a separate single color, so that manufacturers can identify it easily.

Scaling the Design

The last step involves scaling the design according to the size of the enamel pin that you want, so that there is no disparity in the sizes. Now that you have finalized the shapes and layers, you can add different colors that you want to fill inside your design. If you are using a digital design application, you can make use of the paint fill feature. Then, you can take a final look at your design and see if anything needs a touchup or improvement.

Finally, once your design is fully ready and prepared, all you need to do is to export it into a PDF format, or as a vector that you can send to the enamel pin makers or manufacturers.

Get Attractive Enamel Pins from My Enamel Pins

If you are looking for customized enamel pins for different occasions and special events, check out My Enamel Pins. It doesn’t have any minimum order limit, so you can print as many as you want. You can get all kinds of soft and hard enamel pins to adorn your attire at Myenamelpins.