How to get the best out of your embroidery

Running a commercial embroidery shop for several years has given me the insight to share with you 5 things to avoid when creating a business logo if you plan to use the design for embroidery.
Many designers are good at creating a new logo design which looks fantastic on screen but won't stitch well at all.

Make sure these 5 points are considered before signing off on your logo design if you want stunning embroidery on your workwear or uniform!

#1 Size Matters.

Small text is one of the issues we see most commonly.
We recommend text is no smaller than 4mm tall, otherwise, the centre of letters could be filled in and the general clarity of wording may suffer.

If you have an existing logo which includes small text, consider omitting any irrelevant wording or re-working the design slightly to make it as clear as possible for the viewer. 

#2 Say NO to transparencies

Embroidery doesn't lend itself to transparencies.
Thread isn't see-through so trying to create a see-through effect won't turn out well when stitched.
If you can avoid any transparencies in your original logo design it will save problems when the time comes to having the artwork digitised.
(Digitising is the process of redrawing artwork and making it suitable for machine embroidery, then saving it as a machine file for the embroidery machine to read).

#3 Avoid complex designs

Trying to recreate the graphic, with this type of text, including the intricate detail as a standard-sized logo design of around 90mm across also won't work out well. Not only because the detail would be very hard to replicate but because the machine will need to do a lot of stops and starts as well. This isn't usually a problem for the customer until it comes to actually wearing the garment. Each time the machine has to stop and re-start there will be a 'tie off' on the reverse side of the stitch out. If the embroidery is next to the skin on a t-shirt or polo shirt it can be itchy or uncomfortable to wear.

#4 Use regular fonts

Fonts, like in this image, when reduced in size will potentially not stitch well. We would recommend avoiding them.
There is little benefit to having wording which is difficult to read. Your brand identity should be clear and easily recognisable.
Just so we are clear; I'm not suggesting we can use text like this if it is large enough. The problems rear their heads when we try to scale things down. 

#5 Gradients and blends

Another thing embroidery machines struggle with is blends or gradients. Over the years, we have seen some poor examples where digitisers have done their best to reproduce a blend. In reality, there isn't a way of doing it well, over a small area, with a standard embroidery machine.
Think about this with your artwork and understand the limitations of the embroidery process.

Above are a couple of images to show how a design was simplified from the original artwork to get a representation of the desired logo.
This was a small 5cm diameter stitch out for a garment sleeve. As you can see, there is still quite a lot of detail included.

In conclusion

If you avoid the 5 things listed in this article you should be on your way to some great-looking workwear embroidery.

I'd love to hear from you if you found this article interesting or if you have any comments.

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