As a business owner, club adviser, or anyone else with the wish to design a lapel pin, settling on the right options for your creation stretch beyond colors, concept, and shape. Materials and features of cloisonne, die struck, screen print, and offset print lapel pins deserve careful consideration. Regardless of your design or promotional needs, there is a custom made pin option for you!
Cloisonne Hard Enamel
The most elegant and valued of custom made lapel pins, cloisonne hard enamel pins combine colored enamel made from colored resins and a luxurious glassy finish. The luster of the cloisonne style raises these custom pins to jewelry status for owners and collectors. Manufacturers apply artistic techniques to accomplish the glory of the cloisonne glaze, filling areas of the pins with glass-like color resins and firing them in an oven.
Employees, students, and others who receive cloisonne hard enamel pins cherish and take pride in the jewelry-like representation of an accomplishment or association with an organization. Best of all, the glassy finish makes these pins durable enough to avoid scratching, cracking, and chipping from wear.
Die Struck
Die struck lapel pins are designed with raised and recessed areas achieved by striking a custom made die into prepared brass or copper. Pin designers can add enamel color to their design, creating a die struck soft enamel variation with extra character. Often, the soft enamel color fills the areas between the raised metal outline of the pin design, giving organizational and professional pins the classic charm of textured metal and significant colors.
Screen Print
Screen print custom made lapel pins are perfect for company and organization logos because the final image combines multiple colors and well-defined text options. High image quality, clarity of lines and text allow designers to submit unaltered logo designs that print precisely as they appear on screens or paper. Screen printed custom pins shine as promotional items and physical representations of businesses, schools, or clubs with the ease of transferring pre-designed logos to metal.
Screen print pins are prepared by layering one color at a time, in a process similar to t-shirt screen printing, onto a smooth metal foundation. The lack of raised or recessed metal segments gives screen printed pins a simple, flat, colorful surface, and the epoxy finish adds a professional touch of protection to the pin.
Offset Print
Often called photographic pins, offset printed lapel pins give designers the most flexibility with color and concept. Pin designs print at photo quality, and the pins show a high level of detail, allowing precise color, gradient and shadow work as well as the use of endless text styles and sizes. Like other custom made lapel pins, epoxy finish keeps offset pin designs and colors safe from scratches and wear through the years.
The potential for great detail in custom printed lapel pins comes from printing colors onto the foundation one at a time and the laser process used to create the pins. Laser precision achieves a level of printing not seen on other pins that usually sacrifice minute detail for metal embellishments, raised grooves, or grand finishes.
Whether classic embellishments or photographic quality tops your list of priorities, comparison shopping is the best way to achieve the perfect mix of style and function for your lapel pin investment.