Tips for Planning Your Awards
by Eagle's Mark Awards

Less is More

Products to give a recipient for an award, thank you, memorial, retirement and any type of recognition have something in common, fewer words are better. Make a few important words stand out by not getting those words lost among many others. Empty space is what makes other words and graphics stand out.

What's Important

The recipient name is the most important item on the product. The next most important thing is what the recognition is for. Such as an award name, sponsorship level or a few keys words for a memorial. Who's giving the recognition is next and should not stand out. It can be at the top or bottom, however, it should not be more prominent then the name of the recipient or purpose of the recognition. Don't forget a date. It can be a year, month, month-year or specific date based on the frequency of the event or award. So an annual awards would have the year only. Memorials typically have a specific date.

Readability

Lots of text or graphics makes all the text and graphics smaller. Smaller means harder to read. Engraved or sandblasted products provide an additional challenge with small text and graphics. Engraving and sandblasting is a destructive process, that is it cuts away material and is inset into the glass, acrylic wood or other materials. Light reflects off all sides of the inset engraved area making small lines stand out less. This does not occur on printed material or laser engraved metal (paint coated metal). On glass, acrylic and wood you need larger size text and graphics than you do on paper. So design your words and graphics with this in mind.

If there are a lot of desired words you would like to share with the recipient, I suggest considering giving the recipient a letter or certificate accompanying the recognition product. You can read the letter or certificate before or after you present the recognition product. We sell certificates for this purpose or most word processing, publishing and art software have standard templates for this purpose. With a color printer these templates can produce and nice looking, professional certificate.

Paint Fill or No Paint Fill

Glass and acrylic turn when when lasered or sandblasted. It has an elegant look. Wood may have a burnt look, depending upon how much sap remains in the wood. Glass, Crystal, Acrylic, Wood and other Deep Engraved products may be paint filled with a single color or several colors in different sections of the product. Glass and Acrylic may be engraved from the front and/or back and paint fill can be applied on either or both sides. Here's where small lines in small text or thin lines in graphics create a large problem. They do not fill with paint well. First, we are much more limited on how deep we can engrave or sandblast thin and small lines. There are several reasons for this that I won't go into. Deeply etched surfaces are needed so the paint as plenty of surface to stick to or it pulls out easily when removing the paint/sandblast mask. The second issue is in regards to how light reflects off the painted surfaces. Paint shows best when much of the painted surface is flat, reflecting the light forward off the paint. On a deep etched surface much of the paint is on the side walls of the etch facing each other. Much of the reflected light is not going towards your eyes, therefore you don't see the painted surface. The bottom line is: Avoid small text and graphics by reducing what to plan to put on the recognition product.

We cannot duplicate color blends and fades that can be produced by a printer on paper. We also cannot apply two different color paints in different parts of graphics sharing the same line. Even painting several colors very close to each other on a graphic is not possible with reliable results. Simple is best...Complex is Expensive!