Customer engraving

[Stefan79]

All pre-orders placed before Dec 10, 2015 will include a customer engraving of your callsign or special logo on the baseplate free of charge. This is a limited time offer. You will be contacted on how to submit your callsign or artwork at a later date.

Have anybody a clue which format it must be ? Can we use colors or only black and white ?

[DHRF]

could have bad words in it?
what about political meaning?
or can be illegal on some country

or unpopular ones like
EJ:
Saitek rules
Love DHRF

What are the guidelines for incorrect or unpopular engraving if any?

[PatMan33]

Pretty excited at the idea of the custom engraving. Probably more excited than I should be. :3

[Bourrinopathe]

Hi,

Here's a sneak peek on the design recommendations:



It's just a quick grab from the russian forum. I'm sure Jason will provide better information in time.

[Stefan79]

thx Bourrinopathe

I am wondering.
Why it is a white background and a Black logo/text ? Shouldn't it be a Black background ???
I allready build my logo. All visible parts i made white and the rest transparent (The transparent part should be black because of the black plate) ?

Is that correct ??? or do i have to switch the colors ?

Stefan

[Bourrinopathe]

Hi Stefan,

(these are not the official instructions)

Black drawings/texts on a white background is a standardization.

You should stick to the example. The laser engraver will only "print" the filled shapes (aka your logo and stuff).
The drawing has to be in two colors only (black and white) - no gradients, etc. I'd suggest you switch your logo to black on white background (and it won't hurt the eyes ).
All the shapes and texts have to be converted to curves.

The tricky part is that you will have to send your content in a .cdr file (a vector graphics file format used by CorelDRAW). No .jpg, .svg, .eps, etc.
You could install a CorelDRAW free trial to import/create and save your logo to the .cdr file format (version 14 - it's from CorelDRAW X4 - newer versions may not be compatible).

Please wait for the official announcement, but these details should help you preparing your logo.

[rrohde]

I am very happy with just getting my callsign engraved; that's a nice, personal touch.

[rrohde]

I've been messing a bit with a potential engraving for myself, and I think that's such a cool idea! I'll be sure to order a MkIII Black Mamba soon.

The only limiting factors is VKB's reliance on such an obscure file format... You'd think that any decent vector based file (e.g., SVG) would work....

[Sprite]

what program are you guys using to create your logo? I have GIMP, but it doesnt support the file formats, and also cant get the 40x35mm image scales down for some reason. I dont really feel like spending extra for an Illustrator subscription. (I am completely noob on graphics design software too, so please excuse my complete ignorance on this)

[rrohde]

Well, I used Inkscape (https://inkscape.org/en/) to create my little vector logo, but Inkscape does not export to Corel Draw or Adob Illustrator that VKB wants to create that engraving. So I might end up just getting my callsign engraved... Btw - Inkscape is free and it's a quite a decent program to generate vector graphics!

[Stefan79]

I DL CorelDraw X7.
You can test it free for 30 days and it is possible to save the files as CDR (even older CDR versions).
No clue why they don't allow *.AI files or *.psd. I am pretty sure Corel Draw could read both formats...

[rrohde]

Good to know, Stefan. I will try Corel Draw X7 then. Thanks.

[Bourrinopathe]

Both CDR and AI are proprietary file formats. That's why CorelDRAW and Adobe Illustrator don't allow you to save your document in the "rival" file format.

Both softwares offer a thirty days trial. Unless you have already used that period in the past, you should be able to try them and save your work in the required file format.
Both will open the SVG file format (open standard) you can create with Inkscape.

Also you can find several free solutions to convert a .jpg or .png to a .svg.

Good luck with your stunning logos guys!

[Radsoc]

Would be nice to see some more custom designs to get some inspiration. I can't decide what to engrave yet, so I made a couple of WW2-inspired .ai source files as practice and inverted them to get an impression of what they would look like.

http://imgur.com/a/QqwlP
(Most source files need some more work.)

Victory ribbon


Air force star

[rrohde]

Also, it would be really nice to get some feedback from our emails with the artwork we've already submitted. They should inform us whether the submitted artwork a) has been received, and b) will work for engraving as submitted.

I also requested that - in case my logo does not work - my callsign will be used instead, so the Mamba's base plate isn't left blank, but so far, I haven't heard anything back...