Saturday, July 6, 2019

Your Embroidered Logo: Logo Evolves...

Starting a business - You have a general idea of what your business will do but you're uncertain about your final direction. You want embroidered shirts but you don’t want a logo that won’t work as your business evolves. What should you do? Have shirts embroidered with just your business name. Make sure your name is easy to read and contrasts well with the shirt color.

Two years later - Your growing business has direction. Its time to create your brand. Spend time considering the style, fonts, image, colors and organization in your logo. Is it understandable, unique, memorable? Does it represent your business? Get honest feedback and revise, revise, revise...

Two years pass - You want to introduce a new product. You develop a small logo to be embroidered on shirt sleeves.

Another year passes - Your embroidered logo could use an update. You change the business font, adjust the spacing so your business name can be enlarged, brighten the thread colors and choose a different shirt color.

Next summer - You want a subtle look. You choose a tone-on-tone thread color for your embroidered logo.

That fall - You want hats embroidered with a small design on the left front panel for a change.

Next year - Should you add employees names to shirts? Get hats for a give-away? Try a new shirt style? The possibilities are endless with custom embroidery!

Monday, July 1, 2019

Your Embroidered Logo: DST Files?

What is a dst file? It’s a file format that many commercial embroidery machines read. It tells an embroidery machine what stitches to embroider. It's also known as a “stitch” or a “Tajima format" file after the Tajima embroidery machines it was developed for.

Can anyone open and look at a dst file? No. You need embroidery software that can open that type of file and an understanding of how to interpret the file. Most brands of embroidery software can open dst files because that format is considered to be the universal format for embroidery machines.

Are all dst files created equally? No. The quality level of the file is only as good as the digitizer who created it.

Do “auto digitized” dst files work? They should embroider but the quality level of the embroidery won’t be as good, the embroiderer may have trouble running the file or the file may run inefficiently.

What are some of the problems found in auto digitized dst files? Auto digitized files often use fill stitches rather than traditional satin stitches to fill in areas which can make the design look flat. Auto digitized designs often don’t have any sense of how the design should progress from the beginning to the end so these designs can take longer to run.

How long does it take to learn how to create a good dst file? It can take two years of concentrated study to begin to create good embroidery files and many years to perfect this artistic skill. For more information read What Is Embroidery Digitizing?