Clothing - Digitising Your Logo For Embroidery

When you are ready to have your logo embroidered onto a garment, we first need to digitise it. There are a few tips we'd like to share with you for making this process easier and to give you a  far better outcome.

Digitising is a process that turns the logo into a format that the embroidery machine needs. It tells the machine where to put the stitches as well as in which order to put them there. Digitising is more than just scanning a logo and plotting where the stitches should go. Quality digitising takes into account the number of trims, walking stitches, and other embroidery jargon, all of which contributes to a clean and efficient logo.

Colours and designs all play a part in the process and need to be considered. Where possible, its vital you get the overall look of your logo right in the first place. An effective logo has only two or three colours in it. To switch colours the machine has to stop to change the needle or thread, thus using more than three causes the needle to make more stops and over complicates the embroidery process, making the resulting image less clean looking.

Another aspect to consider, especially when digitising a font, is the 'pull' consideration. Depending on whether the stitch movement is up or down or left and right, the embroidery machine can pull on the fabric which can make it appear uneven. Quality digitising will take this into account, so that the letters will always appear even, otherwise you'll end up with elements that just look out of place, irregular or disproportionate.

Using a backing or an underlay is another technique that is necessary to create a great looking logo. With enough underlay, the logo stitching does not sink into the weave of the garment, and adds dimension to the embroidery.

Saving a few pounds on digitising is not worth the risk. As we hope we have explained, digitising is far more than simply scanning an image. It's a complicated process that is necessary to achieve good results. Make sure your embroidered company logo is something you and your employees will be proud of.