As a master maker I see plenty of logo's that are either homemade or professionally commissioned that don't work for printing and reproduction castings for various reasons. Here I'll go through some of the do's and dont's and most importantly why's of logo or icon design for master making.
Design Considerations
Size - The biggest limitation when considering producing a logo for your masters is the surface area you get to play with. The most common positioning for a logo on dice is the high face of your D20 - the crit face...but this is also the smallest sized face in a standard set! A 22mm D20 has equilateral triangle shaped faces that measure just 14mm in width. When you allow a 2mm tolerance in the form of a border this allows just 10mm at the widest point. This basically leaves the size of a computer icon to get your very complicated logo into. If you have a complex idea consider keeping this logo for your print and on screen media and developing an icon version for your masters or why not get the full logo on a d2 coin instead here you'll have up to 30mm2 to portray your epic idea.
Colour and Depth - The way master dice show numbers or images is through depth. The numbers are 'cut' into the masters leaving them 1mm lower than the surface. When adding a font or a logo to dice the image needs to be in purely black on white so the software can recognise the different levels - black represents the area to be cut and white represents the outside surface. Grey scale and colour images won't work for this reason the two colours show the two levels.
Line thickness - The biggest issue I find with submitted logos is that designs are often made out of purely line work (no solid or filled in shapes) and to squeeze more and more into the design lines become very thin. There are two major issues with lines that are too thin - printer detail and ease of moulding/casting. When the cut lines in designs are too thin they fill in because the liquid resin used in the printing process cannot drain fully between layers, this reduces the depth of the cut out to the point where sanding/polishing can easily remove it. Tief's Things has one of the most upto date laser resin printers and can replicate the smallest logo detail but I always advice against this as you get problems further into the process. Even if the design shows fully in your master, once cast in silicone to make moulds tiny or thin details can resist casting by catching bubbles and are very weak in finished molds. These weak points tear easily and the mould will need to be replaced prematurely (and mould making isnt cheap!)
OMG do I have to do that logo again?! - Whilst no 2 logos I've put onto dice for customers have ever been the same, there are some incredibly common ideas out there that you might want to steer clear of...
- Outlined D20 with something in the middle - This is the most common idea makers come to me with....and I will advice them against it every time - see my point above Re: line thickness. To put a d20 outline onto a d20 face the line work has to be incredibly tiny and will cause you no end of problems down the line. Plus its the equivalent of saying ATM Machine or PIN Number, why do so many people want a picture of a d20 on a d20? it baffles me! sorry rant over
- Origami Animals - Again these involve a lot of detailed line work see above
- Cats - these seemed to go through a faze for a while there were loads and loads of feline designs but very little support for the woofers out there in dice logo
- Copywrited characters/designs - You'll get in trouble for wanting something that's not your intellectual property and so could I for selling it to you.
- Swords - Swords are long and thin, the face of the dice is a triangle. My personal opinion is that the two ratios don't work particularly well together as well as the theme being a little bit too overused, lets add something extra into the rest of the space.
My advice is to search Instagram for dice makers using shared keywords in their makers name to you and avoid a similar logo where possible and many of the dice making Facebook groups have logo and business name registration spreadsheets that provide useful source too.
So if I've not scared you off designing your own logo here's a free template to use as a layer in your design software or print it off to scale to draw on in black marker - as long as its black and white a photo of your hand drawn logo is just as good as a digital version.
If you'd rather get a professional to do it for you share this article and template with them as part of the brief to avoid ending up with something unusable. Alternatively ask Tief's Things to design your logo as well as print your dice Shop Link: https://tiefsthings.com/products/logo-design-for-dice-faces
Happy Dice Making xxx
p.s. heres a load of examples to give an idea of what's possible ;)
