Custom Enamel Pins: Hard Enamel or Soft Enamel

Enamel pins are the merchandise end of metal: sold rather than given, collected rather than issued, and usually designed to be interesting in their own right. Artists, brands, conventions and communities order them, and the design freedom is the point. This is a different buying decision from a service award, which is what the lapel pins page covers.

The choice that defines the product is hard enamel or soft enamel, and it is worth understanding before you design rather than after. Soft enamel leaves the metal lines raised above the color, so you can feel the design with a thumb and the outlines catch light. Hard enamel is polished flat, so the surface is smooth and the metal sits level with the color. Neither is better. They look different, they feel different, and people have strong preferences.

Design constraints are the ones a small metal object imposes. Every color area needs a metal line around it, which means adjacent colors cannot simply meet, and very fine detail has to be simplified. Send the artwork at the size you actually want the pin made, because that is what decides whether the detail survives, and we will show you the simplification on the proof before anything is produced.