Designing a National Guard Challenge Coin? 9 Steps to Take
Have you always wanted to find a way to show your appreciation for the men and women in the United States National Guard?
If so, you’re not alone. After all, veterans and those currently enlisted in the Armed Services put themselves on the line every single day in order for the rest of us to enjoy an incredible quality of life. That’s why each person in this country should take the time to acknowledge their sacrifice.
Challenge coins are a great way to do this. Here we take a look at tips for designing custom challenge coins that you can collect and give to your loved ones. Keep reading to learn more.
Table of Contents
1. What Is the Intent of the Coin?
Let’s start by discussing the intent behind designing a custom National Guard challenge coin. After all, a challenge coin designed to acknowledge members of the Armed Services is something you should take very seriously.
Take some time to really think about why you feel the need to invest time and energy into your challenge coin design. What do you hope to gain from the process?
For example, perhaps you want to pay your respects to someone who has passed. Or you might be wanting to raise money for a worthy cause. Whatever the reason, keep this in mind through every step of the design process.
2. Sketch Out Your Initial Concept
Next, get out some paper and start putting down a few ideas in black and white. This is one of the funniest parts of designing challenge coins military.
The key is to let your creativity take over. After all, it doesn’t cost a dime to sketch out crazy ideas. This will also help get rid of bad ideas so that you can get to the good stuff.
Sketch out as many ideas as possible and then narrow them down to the ones that you might want to use until you find the perfect one.
3. Look at Other Examples of Great Coins
As you’re sketching a few ideas on paper, take the time to explore some cool ideas that you’d like to emulate.
There are plenty of awesome challenge coins military in the world. Look at as many as possible so that you’ll be inspired to evolve your ideas and create a design people will admire.
Here’s a great resource for collecting National Guard challenge coins.
4. Try to Find Interesting Vectored Artwork Online
What is vectored artwork? This is a type of pre-existing artwork that can help speed up your design process.
The key is to search online for vectored artwork that fully embodies the spirit of your custom challenge coins. Then you can add your own design touches to the existing vectored artwork in order to take the overall design to the next level.
5. Look for a Design that will Easily Scale
A big part of creating an effective and attractive design for a challenge coin is to make sure it’s something you can easily scale.
Keep in mind that you’ll be taking a large image and scaling it down to the size of a coin. This can make things very difficult if you’re not careful. Thus you should carefully measure each detail of your design before including it in the final image that you intend to use.
You’d be wise to start by creating a digital image that you can resize on your computer. This will enable you to quickly scale the image to see how it will look at its final size on your coins.
6. Investigate Plating Options
Another aspect of designing a custom challenge coin is deciding what type of plating to use.
What is plating? Well, most challenge coins are either gold or silver planted. The material you choose helps set the tone for the final product.
Choosing a plating material is mostly a matter of preference, and yet the right plating can help your coins stand out by maximizing the quality of your overall design.
7. Make Your Design Specific
Many people make the mistake of making their National Guard challenge coin design generic. The best strategy for ensuring the most memorable design possible is to make it specific to the area where you live.
In other words, try to use imagery and text that reflects the place or person you are wanting to honor.
8. Details Matter
The smallest details of your challenge coin really add up. Because of this, it’s important to focus on adding details that will create the overall design, one small piece at a time.
In other words, no detail is too small to make a significant impact.
9. Take Your Time
There’s no reason to get in a hurry. After all, your challenge coins will be around for many years. Thus you should slow down, get the details right, and create a design that will be enjoyed and cherished for decades to come.
Tips for Designing National Guard Challenge Coins
It’s no secret that the people who have served in the National Guard are truly heroes. That’s why you should celebrate them every chance you get. Fortunately, this guide to designing custom national guard challenge coins will help the veterans of our country understand how much they mean to you.
This blog is the product of a desire to provide readers with a wealth of information that can help improve their quality of life. Please feel free to continue exploring our content to find more articles filled with useful lifestyle-oriented tips and advice.
Last Updated on January 26, 2023
