Fantasy Football Trophies, Custom Logo Title Plates, Part 4

In parts 1 through 3 of this series, I have discussed artwork requirements for creating custom title plates for Fantasy Football Trophies. In these prior posts, I have talked about how artwork needs to be black and white and "camera ready" high resolution artwork.

In the realm of laser engraved title plates, it is important to understand how the laser engraving machine works. The laser either cuts, or it doesn't. This is a process of material removal, not printing, so grey scale and half tones are not possible. Or are they?

In the above example, we see the typical black and white laser engraving. It is either black or gold, the laser cut, or it didn't.


Since a laser cannot engrave in "grey" how can we achieve a half tone effect? By assigning a shade of grey to an area on the artwork, the laser will create a pattern, and this pattern will read as lighter or darker halftones. A more dense pattern will be perceived as being lighter, and a sparse pattern will be perceived as darker. In the example to the left (which you can click on to see full size) we can see this half tone effect in the plumage of the hen.

If half tones are to be used, it is critical that the artwork be high resolution, as I discussed in earlier parts of this article, if you don't have quality art, you should bite the bullet and pay your engraver to do the artwork for you.

In this example on the left, we have a black and white image that might have used grey scale in order to further define the areas around the hawk's eyes, although this is a very nice looking plate!




This trophy featuring the Tazmanian Devil in grey scale is a great example of how the half tones can effectively work to help define an image. Here we have 2 shades of grey, the lighter shade on his chest, and the darker shade representing his limbs. The perimeter around Taz is completely removed, like the text. Anything shown in gold would be black in a black and white image.

Previously, I mentioned that when working with logo art, it is helpful to invert the art so that the page is black and the art is white. This is closer to what the actual plate will look like, and can help in determining what portions of the logo should be visually clarified for maximum impact.

If you would like to see all of our perpetual fantasy football trophies, loser trophies and football keeper trophies, visit us at Sculpture Alley!

Fantasy Football Trophies, Custom Logo Title Plates, Part 3

In my last post, I talked about the difficulties trophy makers have with the artwork submitted by fantasy football leagues for their custom title plates.


This subject is so important, it warrants further explanation and examples. As I mentioned in my last post, I am using real examples from commishes who wanted to have their logo incorporated into their fantasy football trophy title plates.

Let's start with the above image submitted to me by a commish. As discussed in the part 2, artwork needs to be clean, camera ready, and in black and white. The commish told me he just wanted to do the figure with outstretched arms in the circle as his league logo.

The problem is, this logo doesn't exist, and that means that our graphics department has to create it, which results in a $30 art charge. The football commish didn't want to pay for the art charge, saying, "Can't you just copy the dude in the circle?"

No. there is text in front of the figure and the circle, there is all kind of shading and imagery on the figure, etc. Understand that when your "logo" doesn't have clarity and isn't a cohesive design, you are going to be looking at some kind of upcharge in order to get this image on your trophy.

The next example is the very common customized NFL shield, that the league has modified to be their logo. Not a problem, but in this case, the shield is fuzzy and pixilated, not to mention that it is in color, and is not at all suitable for laser engraving.


As I mentioned in part 2, we need to be able to freely resize the logo, and enlarge it with absolutely no loss in clarity, or the logo will look blurry and crappy when engraved.





Next we have an example of a league shield we created for a fantasy football commish. We did end up revising the greek letters under the FFFL portion of the logo.

Now, you might notice that this is a little blurry when you click to enlarge. That is because when we create a logo for someone, we send them a proof in a jpeg or pdf for easy viewing, as not everyone has high resolution graphics software like CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator.



Here we see the finished laser plate, with revised greek letters, custom text under the logo, and the rest of the league information left aligned and stacked on the right side of the plate. This is the kind of bold, clean layout that gets noticed from across the room!






Here is another poor quality jpeg logo presented to us for laser engraving by a football league commissioner. The greyscale in this logo would not translate well on a laser plate, it would make the overall look very muddy.



Below is the revised artwork for the fantasy football trophy title plate. With the gretscale removed, we have a clean black and white logo which will really pop on the title plate.

Probably one of funniest types of engraving requests I get is when someone sends me an animated gif and asks if I can engrave it on their title plate.

Moving images are not suitable for laser engraving.

So what kinds of files should you send? .Tif files work very well, most jpegs do not. Just make sure that you can enlarge the file without loss of quality or getting the pixel effect. You can also save your file in a much larger size, as there is rarely a loss of quality when making an image smaller.

To see all of our fantasy football perpetual, loser and keeper trophies, visit us at Sculpture Alley!

Fantasy Football Trophies, Custom Logo Title Plates, Part 2

In the world of fantasy football trophies, nothing is more desirable than incorporating the league's custom logo into the title plate design. More and more fantasy leagues have their own logos, and branding the trophy with this image is not only cool, but it also makes other leagues that see the trophy salivate with envy!

Hands down, the biggest challenge in creating a custom laser engraved title plate lies in the artwork. Logo artwork needs to be camera ready, that means clear, crisp black and white art. Admittedly, I cringe when someone sends me art to review for their fantasy football trophy, I know when I open the file what I am going to see. Less than 1 percent of artwork submitted for engraving is acceptable, and I spend a great deal of time explaining to fantasy commishes why.

I am going to use actual examples of fantasy football trophy artwork submitted to illustrate this point. Let's start with exhibit A. This is typical of the kind of art file we receive. Most leagues create their logos in a jpeg format and have it posted up on their fantasy league website. While this is great for a website, it's no good for laser engraving. First of all, it is in color, and a laser only operates in black and white. There are a few exceptions in terms of greyscale that I will address in part 4 of this article.

The biggest problem with this logo, which is so common, is that when you attempt to enlarge it, the logo becomes pixilated, with jagged edges. With a laser engraved title plate, what you see is what you get, so having a pixilated and blurry image on the plate looks like, how shall I say it? Crap.

In the case of this fantasy league logo, we needed to completely recreate the artwork in a high resolution format. This means our graphics department had to draw the logo in CorelDraw which then can be used to engrave the plate. When a fantasy football logo has to be sent to the art department, we generate a proof for client review in a jpeg or pdf file for easy viewing.

In the second example above, we have inverted the file and changed the white to a gold color. This is very helpful for football leagues to imagine how their logo will look laser engraved on the trophy. At this point we can make changes to the logo to help clarify certain elements, based on what the league commissioner wants. Once approval is given on the art, we can complete the title plate on the fantasy football trophy!

Here we have the completed trophy, which you can click on to get a better look, along with any of the other pictures in this post. This fantasy football trophy also incorporates custom fonts, and again, prior to engraving, the entire layout was sent in a proof to the commish for approval.

If your logo needs to be recreated, you will have to pay a one time art charge, which is typically $30, but can be higher if the logo is super detailed and takes more time to draw and digitize.

Trust your trophy engraver if they tell you the artwork is not suitable. Look at the logo, try to enlarge it to a 4 inch by 4 inch size, and if looks pixilated, it's no good. Don't try to smooth it or sharpen contrast in your photo editing program and resubmit it again and again. Many fantasy leagues do this in an effort to avoid the art charge, and spend hours monkeying around with the logo. If you want the logo to look like it should on your football trophy, and you don't have a graphics artist in your league, just bite the bullet and have it done right. Our policy is, if the artwork won't look great on the plate, we simply don't accept it, because we know that ultimately the league will be disappointed with the results.

To see our full collection of fantasy football perpetual, loser and keeper trophies, visit us at Sculpture Alley! Please feel free to email or post any questions!