Medal Design Guide — You Bring the Idea, We'll Create the Design

Start with the purpose, then work in this order: decide the event type and audience, pick a diameter and thickness, lay out the front (event name, year, main artwork), decide what goes on the back, choose the plating finish and enamel colours, then specify the ribbon. You do not need design software — send us a sketch, a logo, a reference photo or even a written description, and our team turns it into production-ready artwork with 3D renderings within 24 hours, free.

No. Design is free, includes 3D renderings from front, back, side and angled views, and carries unlimited revisions at no charge. Six full-time designers work in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and CorelDRAW. You are not obliged to place an order after seeing the design.

Vector files are best — .AI, .CDR, .EPS or .PDF — because they scale without quality loss. Raster files are acceptable at 300dpi or higher at actual print size (.PSD, .PNG, .JPG). Also perfectly fine: a phone photo of a hand-drawn sketch, a photo of a medal you like, a PowerPoint slide with your logo and notes, or simply an email describing your event and colour preferences.

Minimum text height is 1.5mm for laser engraving and 2mm for enamel. Sans-serif fonts such as Arial or Helvetica hold up best at small sizes — serifs blur together when the enamel flows, and thin scripts should be avoided entirely. If you have a lot of text (event name, date, location, sponsor), move some of it to the back, where there is more usable space.

For adult events, 60–70mm (2.4–2.8in) at 2.5–3mm thick is the most common range. Children's events sit at 40–50mm (1.6–2.0in) at 2–2.5mm so the medal is light on a small neck. Tournament awards typically run 50–65mm. Commemorative and display pieces go to 80–100mm at 4–6mm. Two inches — about 50mm — is the rough line between a token for a child and an award for an adult.

Zinc alloy die-cast medals need a minimum 2mm wall. Going below that risks short shots and weak edges, because the molten metal may not fill the cavity reliably. Brass gets hard to stamp past 3mm and iron past 4mm. Standard production sits at 2.5–4mm, and 4–6mm is used for premium or commemorative pieces.

There is no hard ceiling, but cost scales per colour because each one is a separate fill and cure step. One to three colours is standard pricing; four to six adds a small per-colour surcharge; seven or more is priced per additional colour. Black counts as one colour, and the metal colour comes from plating rather than enamel — so a gold-plated medal with red, blue and black enamel is a three-colour job, not four.

Yes. We stock ten base enamel pigments and mix fresh per batch to your Pantone specification. Your brand red is not our default red — if your brand guide says PMS 186 C, that is what we mix. The same standard is applied across enamel, plating and ribbon so the medal, your event signage and your brand materials stay consistent. Formulations are archived against your account so a reorder matches the previous batch.

Once you approve the final artwork it converts directly into Beijing Jingdiao CNC toolpaths — there is no translation step between the design file and the mould file, because they sit in the same software ecosystem. That is why we can move from design approval to mould cutting the same day, and why the 3D renderings match the finished medal so closely. The mould is carved from mould steel and then heat-treated to hold edge sharpness across runs of 10,000+ pieces.

The back is included in the mould, so treat it as free space. Common uses: event name and date, sponsor logos, a short message such as "Finisher" or "Champion", a city skyline or course map, or a blank panel reserved for laser-engraved participant names and finish times. Laser engraving is the most cost-effective way to personalise each medal with variable data from an Excel or CSV file.