TL;DR
To add your logo to a custom medal, send a vector file (AI, EPS, or SVG) and pick a decoration method that matches your artwork: laser engraving for single-color line work, soft enamel for bold multi-color designs, UV printing for gradients or photos. Approve a digital proof before anything gets tooled.
1. Start With the Right Logo File (Before You Contact a Supplier)
The right file for a custom medal is a vector — AI, EPS, or SVG. These formats scale without falling apart, and that matters because engraving and enamel work are driven by mathematical paths, not pixels.
Raster images like JPEGs or PNGs pulled straight off a company website are made of fixed pixels. Try to scale a low-res JPEG up to 60mm and the edges go jagged. The bigger issue: CNC machines that cut the steel molds for die-casting can’t read pixels. They need vector paths.
Send a raster file and someone in the factory’s art department has to redraw it by hand. Most suppliers tack on a setup fee of roughly $10 to $20 for that.
Acceptable File Formats Ranked:
- AI (Adobe Illustrator): Preferred. Keeps line weights, layers, and text outlines intact.
- EPS: The industry standard for a reason. Opens in almost anything.
- SVG: Great for anything born on the web.
- PDF (high-resolution): Fine, but only if it was exported from vector software with editable layers.
- PNG / JPEG (300+ DPI): Last resort. Expect a vectorization fee and some loss of fine detail.
2. Match the Decoration Method to Your Logo Type
Pick the wrong method and the factory ends up altering your logo to make it manufacturable. Nobody wants that call.
Here’s the decision tree I’d walk a client through:
- Does your logo have gradients, drop shadows, or photo-real elements? UV printing. Ink gets laid directly on the metal and cured under UV light, which sidesteps the physical metal-border problem entirely. Handles tiny text under 0.8mm too.
- 1 to 8 solid colors with clean boundaries? Soft enamel or hard enamel. The factory strikes the metal to form raised borders, then injects liquid paint into the recessed cavities. Soft enamel leaves a texture you can feel with a fingernail. Hard enamel gets polished flat and looks like glass.
- Single-color line art or just text? Laser engraving or die-struck. Die-struck relies entirely on raised and recessed metal — no paint. Engraving etches into a pre-made blank.
- Big color blocks but tiny clustered sponsor logos? Hybrid. Soft enamel for the main design, UV print for the sponsor cluster on a flat metal panel.
That last one comes up more than you’d think, especially with race medals.
3. Size, Placement, and the Physics of a Small Metal Disc
On a standard 60mm medal you get roughly 45mm of usable diameter once you subtract the rim and border. That’s your canvas. Not much.
Standard custom medals run 2mm to 4mm thick and get formed on high-pressure die-casting machines — typically 88-ton presses for zinc alloy. If your logo has lines that are too thin, the molten metal won’t flow properly into the mold cavities. You get broken structures, or in the worst case, a piece that won’t strike cleanly at all.
Minimum Thresholds for Production:
- Raised metal lines: at least 0.1mm thick, though 0.2mm to 0.3mm is what I’d actually spec.
- Soft enamel color channels: minimum 0.3mm wide. Any narrower and the enamel syringe physically cannot inject paint into the recess.
- Text legibility: at least 1.5mm high — call it 5pt font. Text under 0.8mm has to go on UV print instead of enamel.
Always convert text to outlines in your vector file. If you leave it as a live font and the factory doesn’t have that font installed, their computer will silently substitute something else, and your carefully chosen typeface becomes generic sans-serif. I have watched this happen on final proofs more than once.
4. Getting Color Right — Pantone, CMYK, and Metal Backgrounds
Your website’s HEX code isn’t going to map cleanly to physical metal. Manufacturers standardize on Pantone Solid Coated (PMS) for enamel paints and CMYK for UV digital printing.
Give the factory your exact PMS code. If you don’t, they’ll guess based on your digital file, and their guess is based on a monitor that isn’t calibrated to yours.
Even with an exact PMS code, every supplier will slap a “closest match” disclaimer on the quote. That’s because the base metal shifts the perceived color. A bright yellow enamel that pops on a silver nickel base can visually die when it’s surrounded by antique bronze. UV ink isn’t fully opaque either, so a light logo printed on black nickel will read darker than the file suggests.
5. Fixing a Bad Logo File Yourself (Free and Cheap Options)
If all you’ve got is a JPEG or PNG, you can skip the factory’s vectorization fee by converting it yourself. Free software like Inkscape does an auto-trace — import the image, hit Path > Trace Bitmap, and it calculates the edges into a vector SVG. Works great on high-contrast, black-and-white logos.
It falls apart on anything else. Multiple colors, shading, low resolution — auto-trace generates messy, jagged paths that no CNC operator wants to touch.
When the tools fail, hire a person. A freelancer on Fiverr or Upwork will redraw your logo by hand with the pen tool, usually for something in the $5 to $20 range. Clean, scalable, factory-ready.
6. One-Sided vs. Two-Sided vs. Insert Medals — Where the Logo Goes
Where your logo sits changes what you pay. Industry default is a one-sided die-struck medal with a flat back.
Add artwork to the reverse and the factory has to cut a second steel mold, which usually adds $50 to $100 to your setup cost upfront. If your budget is tight, leave the back blank. Nobody flips a medal over at an awards ceremony anyway.
The bigger friction point is minimum order quantity. Factory MOQs for die-struck metal usually start at 100 pieces, because cutting a custom steel mold for a run smaller than that just doesn’t pencil out. This is the wall event organizers slam into when they’re ordering for a local jiu-jitsu tournament or a small charity 5K. Runners on r/running vent about it constantly.
The workaround is insert medals. You buy a pre-manufactured blank base with a 2-inch recessed center. The supplier prints your logo digitally onto an aluminum disc or vinyl sticker, epoxy-coats it, and glues it into the recess. No custom mold, MOQs as low as 10 to 25 units. Doesn’t have the heft of a proper die-struck piece, but for a small event it’s the right answer.
7. What a Good Digital Proof Looks Like (And What to Reject)
The digital proof is the contract. Once you approve it, whatever comes off the line is on you. A proper proof shows both sides, labels every color with a Pantone code, and specifies dimensions in millimeters.
Reject the proof if any of these apply:
- Missing dimensions. Diameter and thickness (e.g., 60mm × 3mm) must be stated explicitly.
- Unlabeled colors. Every enamel fill needs an exact Pantone Solid Coated code.
- Blocky or altered text — means the factory didn’t have your font and substituted one. Send outlined paths.
- Flat 2D rendering. The proof should visually distinguish raised metal from recessed areas, usually with a metallic fill on the raised parts.
- Undersized elements. If text drops below 1.5mm / 5pt, reject.
- Thin channels. Enamel channels narrower than 0.3mm will not fill.
- Missing reverse side, if you ordered two-sided.
- Ribbon loop drawn incorrectly or missing entirely.
- Wrong ribbon width, color, or text direction.
- Spelling errors. Factories reproduce typos perfectly. Verify names, years, and event titles twice.
A proof isn’t a physical sample, but it dictates the tooling. Don’t authorize production until every single item above is right.
8. Cost Impact — What Adding a Logo Actually Adds to the Price
Three variables move the price: decoration method, mold fee, and volume.
Laser-engraved insert medals are cheapest. Soft enamel and die-struck sit in the middle. Hard enamel and UV combinations are the most expensive.
For custom die-struck, budget a fixed mold and setup fee of $50 to $300. A lot of suppliers waive that fee once you cross 300 pieces, which is where the math starts working in your favor anyway.
Unit price drops sharply with volume because the setup labor gets amortized across more pieces. Ballpark 2026 pricing for a standard 1.5″ to 2″ custom enamel medal:
- 100 pieces: $3.40 to $6.50 each
- 300 pieces: $2.99 to $4.50 each
- 500 pieces: $2.72 to $4.35 each
- 3,000+ pieces: $1.30 to $3.20 each
Ask for a quote that breaks out unit price, mold fee, ribbon cost, and shipping as separate line items. If a supplier bundles everything into one number, you can’t compare apples to apples across suppliers, and you can’t tell where the margin actually is.
9. Production Timeline From Logo Submission to Delivery
Adding custom logo work stretches your timeline. Off-the-shelf blanks can ship in 48 hours. Custom production, with actual tooling, is a different animal.
Figure 7 to 14 days for digital proofing and sample approval. Once you approve, floor production — mold cutting, die-casting, enamel fill, baking, ribbon attachment — runs another 12 to 25 days.
Shipping is the wildcard. Air express (DHL, FedEx) hits in 5 to 10 days but the weight premium on heavy metal goods can approach the cost of the medals themselves. Plan 90 to 120 days out and you can use sea freight, which takes 25 to 35 days on the water but cuts your total landed cost by anywhere from 30% to 50%. Most organizers don’t plan that far ahead.
10. Legal and Brand Considerations Most Buyers Overlook
You can’t legally slap a third-party logo on a custom medal without written permission from the rights holder. This applies to NCAA collegiate marks, pro sports franchises, corporate sponsor logos — anything you don’t own.
When you submit a design, the factory’s T&Cs make you warrant that you own reproduction rights. The factory takes zero IP liability. If an event organizer hands out medals with an unauthorized corporate logo, the organizer eats the trademark dispute, not the manufacturer.
If you’re running sponsor logos, get brand guidelines from each sponsor. A lot of corporations dictate minimum size and clear-space rules, and you need to pass those directly to your medal supplier. Otherwise you’ll get a proof back where the sponsor logo is 30% too small and technically out of compliance with their brand book, and the sponsor’s marketing coordinator will notice.
FAQ
1. What’s the cheapest way to add a logo to a medal?
Laser engraving or digital printing on an in-stock blank insert medal. You skip the $50 to $300 custom mold fee and MOQs drop to 10 to 25 units.
2. Can I use a photo on a medal?
Yes, via UV printing. Soft enamel can’t reproduce photographs at all.
3. What if I only have my logo as a PNG or JPEG?
Three options. Auto-trace it yourself for free using Path > Trace Bitmap in Inkscape — works well on clean high-contrast logos, poorly on anything with shading or low resolution. Or hire a freelancer on Fiverr or Upwork to redraw it by hand, usually $5 to $20. Or let the medal supplier’s art department vectorize it, typically $10 to $20 tacked onto your invoice. Any of those work; the DIY route only makes sense if your source file is genuinely clean to start with.
4. What’s the minimum quantity for custom logo medals?
Insert-style medals start around 10 to 25 units. Fully custom die-struck and enamel medals usually need 100 units minimum to justify the steel mold.
5. How small can text on a logo be and still be readable?
About 1.5mm high, roughly 5pt.
6. Will the color on my medal match my brand exactly?
Suppliers use Pantone Solid Coated and give you the closest possible match, but the base metal finish (gold, silver, black nickel) shifts how the color actually reads. It won’t be identical to your brand book.
