Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Morgan and I'm the designer behind England imagination. I've been a professional artists for the last several years, specializing and stickers, prints and other hand lettered pieces. About two years ago, I designed my first enamel pin. Since then, I've made several more and they've become my favorite projects to work on. Have you ever seen someone's jacket covered in pins and wished your design could be there to. Designing an email pins may seem intimidating, but once you know the do's and don'ts, it's much simpler than you probably think it is. You don't even have to have experience with design software. In this class, I'm going to walk you through designing a pin from start to finish and share everything I wish I had known when I started. And everything I've learned from making pins of my own so that you can avoid the headaches that I had to work through. We'll start by going over the different things you have to think about when you start your design. That different tools you can use to create your design and what it looks like to start with a hand-drawn design. Next, we will cover the decisions you have to make as you translate your design into an enamel pin. From there, we'll cover manufacturers and how to decide which is the best company for you to work with. Finally, and the bonus lesson, we'll talk about designing the backer cards to finish your new pins presentation. Before you know it, your design will be proudly stepped to someone's well or jacket. Let's get started.
2. Lesson 1: Creating your Design: For this first lesson, we're going to cover some different ways that you can create your pen design, as well as some tips and tricks to make the design process a little easier for everyone. Before we do that, I do want to recommend that you watch at least this lesson and the next one before getting started on your design so that you have all the information that you need ahead of time. When it comes to picking your method for designing your pin, you can absolutely handwrite your design if that's what you're most comfortable with. However, some manufacturers may turn to design feat to take your pen and paper design and turn it into a format that the factory can work with. If you prefer to work digitally, you can use a program like procreate or Photoshop to create your design. Or you can even use a vector design program like Illustrator or Affinity Designer if you're comfortable with them. But it's not necessary at all. Once you've picked your method of design. Here, my tips to help make the design process go as smoothly as possible. First, think about the approximate size that you want your pin to be when it's done. If your pin is going to be smaller than about an inch and a half, you can only include a small amount of detail. So you need to decide if the detail or the size of the pen is going to be more important to you. When it comes time to dry your design. Use a pen or a digital brush that creates a clean, non textured line. This will help you to get the best idea of how your design will translate to the final product, as well as making that translation process easier for your manufacturer. You also need to make sure that both your lines and the spaces between them where there will be color or white enough. One of my manufacturers recommends that your lines be at least three tenths of a millimeter thick. And that the spaces in between them that are gonna be filled with colour or at least half a millimeter wide. I'll show you a trick to check your lines and spaces in just a minute. Moving from the outline to the colors, here are a few things you'll need to remember. First, every area of color has to be surrounded by a metal outline to separate it from the color next to it. Secondly, you will want to limit your color palette to 46 colors. At the most. You could include more colors, of course, but more main effect. Most manufacturers only include four to six colors in their base pricing before they charge a fee for extra colors, and that can get expensive. Lastly, pins can only be created with solid colors. So unfortunately, you can't use gradients or other varied colors like that. Now I am going to show you the trick that I use to make sure the lines and spaces in my design are in line with their requirements from my manufacturer. I am also going to show you on the final pin why those dimensions are so important. I will be using procreate, but you can do something similar in Photoshop. You can see on my iPad that I have procreate open, and I've already set up a canvas. The canvas I've created for this project is three inches square. And I've already added in the design from my latest pen. First I'm going to show you the method I use to size the design to the exact size of the pen. And then I will use that same method to check the width of my lines and spaces. So in procreate, the best way to do this is to click on your wrench tool here, go to your canvas tab and turn on your drawing guide. This creates a grid that will show you how big your design is. But we need to make sure it's set to the right dimensions. So we hit edit drawing guide, and click here where it currently says five millimeters. Yours may be different. I'm going to go to inches. And for my design, because I set it up at 1.75 inches, I'm going to set my grid at a quarter inch. So now I have a grid with perfectly sized quarter inch squares. So I hit my move tool and I put one edge of my design up against a grid line. And then I take the opposite side and I'm going to size it down so that I have seven squares in between. Let's count 1234567. So this is going to now be exactly 1.75 inches wide on my canvas. And I'm willing to center it just a little bit and close up my move tool. Now that we have the pin size, we need to change our grid size so that we can check our lines and spaces. First, let's change it to check our lines. We're going to click here again. And this time we're gonna change it to millimeters. And for our lines the recommendation is 0.3 millimeters. So we're going to hit done, done. You can see that grit is really tiny. But if we zoom in, you can see how the lines compared to it. So what we're looking for here is for each of these lines to fill up a whole square width wise. And you can see that a lot of the letters do. Now like this crossbar here and this crossbar here, they're a little thin. So my manufacturer may or may not be able to work with that. That is something that you would have to check with them on to ensure or you may just have to go in and thicken up. Let's check and make sure. So really the only area I'm seeing is the t cross bars and maybe the dot on the eye and this y here that are going to be a problem. So our lines are looking pretty good at this point. I would go in and I would think in those up just so that we are 100% good to go with our lines. Now let's check our spaces are spaces need to be a little bit bigger. So we're gonna go back and edit our drawing guide again. And here we're going to do 0.5 millimeter, just a little bit bigger. And now we can check our spaces. We can see that I actually have a lot of tight spaces on this. So some manufacturers may have trouble working with this design as it stands. That is something that I can either fix or go to a manufacturer and say, can you do this anyway? But I want to draw your attention to this spot here in the p. I'm going to move the design just a little bit so that you can compare it exactly to a grid on our drawing guide. And you can see that that spot there is very, very small. And it definitely is not the full half a millimeter in all directions. And now I want to show you on the pen itself why that is so important. So when I bring that final pin in and see if I can get it to zoom properly. There we go. That shows it off. You can see here how there's really not a space there in between the loop of the p there. You can see that, that specific loop, I mean there is a hole there, but there's not really room for any animal. That is why it is so important that you make sure your spaces are big enough. Because if not, your designs not gonna look exactly the way that it should. Now the particular manufacturer that I work with now, they were able to work with my crossbars at the size that they were. They were just a little small. So that's why I recommend just checking with your manufacturer, see what they can do, what they recommend. Because each one is going to have their own recommendation. And those 35 are 0.3.5 millimeter sizes are just gonna be kind of an averaged for you to work with.
3. Lesson 2: Design Choices you Have to Make: When it comes to pins, there are several design choices you're going to have to make. It's important to remember that all of these choices not only affect the look of your pins, but also the cost of having the main. The first choice you need to make is which type of enamel you wanna use, hard or soft. First, let's take a look at the physical differences between the two options. And then we'll go over the other differences that will help you decide which type of enamel is best for your design. First, here's an example of a hard enamel pin. You can see that the enamel is flush with the metal details, which creates a smooth, polished look for the pin. Here is an example of a soft enamel pin. On this pin, the enamel is recessed while the details are raised. This creates a textured pin that allows the finer details to appear more easily, which is why I personally prefer soft animal. Now here are the things that you have to consider when deciding between hard and soft animal. Hard enamel is going to be more durable, so it will stay nicer looking for a longer. Soft enamel is more likely to get scratched, though I haven't had that happen often. On the other hand, hard enamel will also be more expensive. So you have to wait the two against each other and decide if the added durability will be worth the extra cost. The second decision you need to make is what metal you want your pins to be cast encoded in. The most commonly used metals are gold, silver, and black nickel. But don't limit yourself to just those options. Most manufacturers can also play it. Your pins in rose gold, antique to metals, or even a rainbow plating. The next choice you have to make is what size you want your pins to be. Most pins are one to two inches at their widest or tallest point. For reference, these two pins are one and a quarter inches tall, and this one is two inches tall, while one to two inches is the average range. There are a lot of pin makers that choose to go even bigger. The reason for that is that the larger a pin is, the more detail it can include. You can see on this pin that I was able to include a lot more smaller and finer details than on my glass slipper pin. This is possible because the Music Box pin is three-quarters of an inch larger than the slipper. In addition to allowing for more details, ordering a larger pin will also increase the cost of having it made. The final choice you have to make concerns the number and type of attachments on the back of the pin. The standard option for most manufacturers is a single post with what is called a military glitch. If the size of your pin allows for it, I recommend adding a second post. Like on this pin. This way your pin won't spin if it's attached to clothing or bag because it has those dual anchor points. You can also upgrade to different kinds of backs are clutches. I personally order these black rubber clutches with all of my pins because they come at a very, very small costs from my manufacturer. And I believe they keep the pins more securely attached. If you want to have even more fun with your design. Here are just some of the special extras that my current manufacturer offers. Other manufacturers may offer different options as well. Extras will make your pen stand out, but they will also increase the cost of your pins, sometimes by a lot. So while it might be tempting to incorporate some interior design, I would stick to one or the most, to extras per design depending on your budget. Now that you've got your design, then it's time to find the manufacturer that will bring your dream to life. We're going to cover all things manufacturers in the next lesson.
4. Lesson 3: Choosing a Manufacturer: Deciding on a manufacturing partner is probably the most overwhelming step of the design process. There are a lot of options out there. And if you just start searching the internet, you have no way to know which option is the right one for you. Choosing a manufacturer is in many ways, a largely personal decision. There are so many good ones out there, and it's all about finding the one that's the best fit for you. I will share their manufacturers I've worked with. But my goal for this lesson is to give you the tools that you can use to find the right fit for you. To help in this, I have included a worksheet to help you keep track as you do your research and make your decision. So first I'm going to share my tips for creating your initial list of manufacturers. And then I will go over the information you will need to gather about each one in order to make that decision, as well as high would get that information. When I was looking for a new manufacturer last year, I read shot on Instagram to some other small shops I had seen selling pins. Now there are going to be some shop owners who don't like sharing who they work with. But in my experience, most makers and small business owners are happy to help out fellow entrepreneurs. If you're polite and most people will be happy to share who they work with and their opinions of them. In addition, you can go to Google and search for something along the lines of best enamel pin manufacturers. I recommend looking for lists that other people have put together or for Google reviews of businesses. That way you're seeing opinions from real customers and not just what a company says about themselves. These are the two companies that I've worked with in the past. I do like the work that both of them have done. But I currently create all my new pins through quality lapel pins because I like their pricing structure better and their capabilities are more in line with what I wanna do with my designs. I do still work with true metal works for reorders of My first two pins as they have an extremely competitive reorder pricing, which was one of the things that drew me to them initially. Once you have your list ready to research, here are a few things you'll want to investigate to help you make an informed decision about who to work with. The first thing I recommend you look for when doing your research is whether or not a potential manufacturer offers the options or extras that you know you want. That way if a company on your list does not offer what you need, you can cross them off immediately before investing a lot of time. The next criteria to consider will only apply if you choose to design your pen on paper or need help with a manufacturer to complete your design. Most manufacturers offer design help, but depending on the amount of work needed and the manufacturers pricing, some companies will charge more for that design work than others. The most important things to look at with prospective manufacturers. Are there minimum order size and the resulting cost per pin? Almost every manufacturer has the minimum order sized. In my experience, that minimum is usually 50 pieces, but some require 100. The number of pieces you order is totally up to you, though here are two things to consider. Ordering more pieces will increase the total cost of your order. So if you have a more limited budget to work with, you may only be able to purchase 50 pins to start. So a company with a minimum order of a 100 won't be a good fit. Now while ordering more pieces will increase your overall cost. It will shrink your cost per pin, often drastically. The cost per pin is an important piece of the puzzle. If you're planning to sell your pins, as it will be what you use to calculate your sales price and your profits. If you're purchasing pins for a club, for example, and not selling them than the overall cost is going to be more important. If you do need to know the cost per pin ever worksheet to help you calculate that as well in the resource section, a lot of this information will likely be very easy to find, like the options are extras that a manufacturer offers. That information is usually displayed publically on their website. But getting information on pricing or extra costs will require one additional step. Every manufacturer I've seen as a quote request form on their website and that's the easiest way to get that information. Each company's form will look slightly different, but they will all ask the same basic info. How many pins you want, what size you want them to be. And if there's anything specific that you want to include, like a cutout or a certain type of enamel. They will also ask you to include a copy of your artwork if you have it, give them as much detail as you can and be sure to include whatever our level of artwork you have already done. When you request your quotes. If you know you want a specific option, tell them that way they can draft the most accurate quote. This is also your chance to ask any questions you might have. I recommend asking if they feel your design will need any adjustments. I've received some very helpful feedback by asking this question and it's helped me to refine my process every time. Another helpful question to ask is one in the process, they will provide a design proof and require payment. Some companies provide a proof before you pay for your pins, but some are will require payment before they send you a proof. This may matter to you. Once you gather all the necessary information from the various manufacturers you're considering, it's time to compare them and make your decision. Remember, it's about finding the right partner for you. So use whatever method works best and compare the costs and other information you've received to figure out which company feels like the right fit once you've made your choice and let them know that you want to work with them. Each company's process will look a little bit different. But here are a few tips to help you finish out this phase of the process and send to your pins into production looking their best. If you're a manufacturer sends your design proof and there's anything that looks off, you can and should ask them to make changes. The change you're most likely to ask for is a color change. Manufacturers use Pantone colors. So when you send them artwork, they have to convert the colors in your document into Pantone colors. Sometimes they may not convert exactly. So there may be a slightly different Pantone color that you think is a better match than they did when you receive your proof. I recommend looking at the colors on at least two devices, as well as printing. Colors will look different in different places. So this will give you the best idea of what the colors will look like when you're pins are made. If you decide you need to change a color. I've linked plantains website in the class resources. They have all of the colors available to view so you can find the exact when you want. They even have a tool to convert colors from RGB or hex codes. So you can take the colors from your document and find the right pan tone color. Once you approve your design, your pins will officially go into production. In my experience, protection takes an average of three to four weeks. Though it can change depending on the factory is workload. Now you're done and it's time to wait for it. If you're anything like me and I've trouble waiting, head to the bonus lesson for one more piece of the puzzle that you didn't use to pass some of the time.
5. Bonus Lesson: Backer Cards: Now that your pins are in production, there's one last bit of design work that I recommend. The step is not necessary, especially if you're not selling your pins. But I really do think that if you are going to sell your pins, this really brings the whole package together. This last step is designing your backer cards. These backer cards make sure that your brand name and your website or social media is always front and center when someone is purchasing your pen. It's especially helpful if someone purchases your pen to gift it. That way when the recipient gets your pen, they can see your brand name and information and they may go check you out and also become a customer. There are a couple of different ways that you can design backer cards. In my experience, though, please be as creative as you want to be, because I'm sure there are different ways that I have not come up with and I would be so excited to see what you do with them. So the first way that I have done pins is this way where I just have a simple background that relates to the pin but doesn't really interact with it in any way. Now for these other three pins that I did, I had backer cards that interacted with the pins, and I'll show you how I made that happen. I have a pen here on a backer parts. You can see once it's altogether, it looks like the music box is sitting on a table in front of the window. If you don't feel like this type of design is right for your brand or your pins. That's totally fine and does not need to look like this, and it does not need to be this intense. I'm gonna switch over here to my iPad. And I'm gonna pull up a design that I did in about a minute that would still totally showcase your PIN and give it just that extra pop while still maintaining that brand awareness that you are looking for in your backer card. Here's an example of a super simple Becker card design that you could do in less than five minutes that would still give your pins that pop. All I did for this design was pick a solid color background. That's actually one of my brand colors. And I took this circle from my logo. I also have here my stylized brand name and my social media and website information. That's it. You don't have a logo or stylized brand name. You can absolutely just use a font and put it on there. And you don't even need the circle. I like it because they brought in my branding for my business cards and other materials. But it's not necessary. This will still make sure that your customers have all that information right there at their fingertips. Now I've opened up the design file for the backer card I made for my second pin, the Cinderella glass slipper. And I'm going to use this one to show you how I size the elements on my back or cards that interact with the pins so that they match up properly. So I'm gonna go into my layers and open the pin design here. So we're going to use a similar trick to when we were checking the width of our lines. We're gonna go over here to our Canvas menu and edit our drawing guide. We're going to turn on our grid. And we're gonna change the grid size to a quarter of an inch because this pin was one and a quarter inches. So then we're going to hit done. And if I zoom in, so let me make those lines a little thicker for you guys since it doesn't show up as well on the camera. So when I zoom in, I can move that layer and I can double check that it is one inch and a quarter tall. So now when I'm designing these elements, I can make sure that the pillow here is proportional to the slipper and they will interact perfectly well. If the proof that your manufacturer provides for you has a diagram of where that post is going to be. Let me show you what that will look like. Here is from the proof that they gave me. And you can see where they have the whole. So then what you can do is you can ups. You can position your pin where you think you want to put it once when you're touching them. And then you can make a mark where that post is supposed to be. And then when I get rid of that layer, you can see that I have a tiny little dot that I place there. And that is just to help me when I am attaching my pins to my backer card to know where to put that post so that everything lines up perfectly.
6. Recap & Class Project: I know you may not be ready to invest in actually having your pins made yet. But I would love to see your design use whatever media you are comfortable with and the tips I've shared to start designing the PIN of your dreams and feel free to share work in progress. I know that design process can take awhile, but I also know that you've got this. I'll be checking out every project posted to the class. And I will be happy to provide feedback if you'd like it. If you want to take it a step further, go ahead and start researching pin manufacturers and reach out to some he might want to work with to get some quotes. If you do end up getting your pins made, please come back and add a shot of the final project to your class project. I would love to celebrate it with you. No matter how far you plan to go with your ideas right now, here are just a few reminders and want to leave you with, remember, clean, simple designs are best when it comes to pins. There are a lot of options out there, but do some research and you will be able to make the right choices for you. Extras can be fun, but they will drive up costs and often, simpler is better, especially when you're starting out. Most importantly, have fun. Nobody expects you to be perfect the first time you do something, or even the second. Thank you so much for watching. I hope this class has given you the competence that you need to get started in the fun world of pin design and cannot wait to see your projects by.
Lauren Brown, Artist | Ink & Imagination
