Personalization Matters
One of the most important aspects of presenting a recognition award is to ensure that it is personalized for the recipient, event or presenting organization (or some combination of all of these). Awards that are totally generic, and don’t in some form recognize and celebrate the recipient or purpose of the award, are far less impactful than awards that uniquely speak to these aspects of the award.
Creating a custom award is the ultimate expression of this objective – the entire award is unique to the purpose for which, and for whom, it was created. However, unique custom awards do not always fit within an organization’s budget. This doesn’t, however, preclude an organization from creating a personalized recognition award.
Award Engravings
One simple and cost-effective way to personalize your awards and trophies is to incorporate a custom engraving on the base of your awards. For example, the engraving might contain the name of the recipient, the name of the award, the name of the presenting organization, date of presentation, and/or a special phrase, quote or motto. These custom engravings may just be text on a base, but they can incorporate a variety of fonts appropriate for the award. In addition to just straight text, however, these engravings can also include graphics, such as organizational logos, logotypes, or icons.
There are two primary ways to incorporate a personalized engraving on the base of our awards. The first, and most common, is to have the engraving etched directly into the base of the awards. This etching can be filled with either a gold or silver fill, or left as its natural color (gray in the case of black marble awards, our most common base material). Generally, it is a good idea for the fill color to match the finish of the sculpture awards – silver fill for pewter or silver-plated pewter sculpture awards, and gold fill for gold-plated pewter and bronze sculpture awards. This enhances the overall design of your award and makes it look that much more cohesive and elegant.
Sublimated Plates
The second option is to have a sublimated plate attached to the base of your awards. This plate is usually silver- or gold-plated, but can be other colors as well. The main advantage of the sublimated plate over the on-base engraving is that it is able to hold more text characters, and can contain color images like a company or brand logo. The right choice between these two options really depends on the details of your specific award.
Another way that organizations can personalize their awards, in addition to custom engraving on the base, is to customize another design component of the award. Many of our recognition awards, for instance, have elements o that can be changed to reflect some unique attribute of the award. Our awards like “The Benny”, “Appreciation” and “Gratitude”, for example, are designed to hold an object, which could be something like a star, a heart, or a child. We have some of these objects in stock, but can also create a custom object unique for a specific client’s needs. In addition, like an award base, each of these objects can incorporate a personalized engraving.