Preparing Artwork for Laser Engraving

A laser does not print. It burns away a thin layer of the surface, so the only thing it understands is mark or no mark. Everything below follows from that. Send us what you have either way — we redraw artwork at no charge and send a proof before anything is cut.

The short version

Vector file if you have one — .svg, .ai, .eps, or a vector .pdf. This is the best possible file.
Otherwise, the biggest PNG you have, at least 1000 px across, on a transparent or plain white background.
Pure black on white. No grey, no gradients, no drop shadows, no glow.
Solid shapes, not outlines, unless the outline is the design.
Nothing thinner than about 1 pt at final size, and no text below about 8 pt.

Why colour disappears

The engraved mark is one colour: the natural colour of the material underneath, which on cork is a darker toasted brown. A red logo, a blue logo and a black logo all come out the same. If your brand relies on colour to separate two shapes — a red circle touching a blue one — those shapes will merge into one blob. Send us the one-colour version of your logo if your brand guide has one; almost every brand guide does.

Why grey and gradients are a problem

The laser can fake shading by burning a dot pattern, the same way a newspaper photo works. On a small item like a coaster those dots read as a muddy smudge rather than as shading, and the result looks like a mistake. Convert photographs and gradients to clean solid shapes, or accept that a photo will look like a sketch. If a photo really is the design, tell us and we will test it on a real piece before you commit.

Detail: what survives and what fills in

Cork is soft and slightly open-grained, so it is more forgiving than glass but less precise than metal. A useful test: shrink your logo on screen to the size it will actually be engraved and look at it from arm's length. If a line vanishes or two letters touch, it will do the same on the piece.

Element	Safe	Risky
Line weight	1 pt and up at final size	Hairlines, 0.25 pt rules
Text	8 pt and up, medium or bold weight	6 pt, thin/light weights, tight script
Gaps between shapes	1 pt of clear space	Letters or shapes that nearly touch
Fills	Solid black	50% grey, gradients, transparency
Effects	None	Drop shadow, outer glow, bevel, soft edges

File formats, best to worst

Vector (.svg, .ai, .eps, vector .pdf) — scales to any size with no quality loss. Convert text to outlines if you can, so a font we do not own cannot substitute itself.
High-resolution PNG with transparency — 1000 px across or more. Transparency tells us exactly which parts are the design.
High-resolution JPG — workable, but JPG adds a halo of fuzzy pixels around edges that we have to clean up by hand.
A screenshot, a photo of a business card, or a logo pulled off a website — usually too small. We can redraw it, and often do, but it adds a day.

Engraved text

If your design is words rather than a logo, you do not need to prepare a file at all. Type the lines into the product page, pick a lettering style, and we will set it. Names and dates for events can be entered one per line, one per piece, so a hundred coasters can carry a hundred different names.

What we do with it

We clean up the file, size it to the engraving area, and send you a proof. Nothing is cut until you approve it. Redrawing and setup are free — we would rather spend twenty minutes fixing a file than send you two hundred coasters with a smudge on them.

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