omg thank you for the pin tutorial!!! so helpful! if you don’t mind I have 3 questions! 1) can you design the pins in any art program? 2) how exactly do you do the shiny metal effect in photoshop for the outline and is it required or will a plain color be fine? 3) what kind of file should you save your design as before you submit it to your manufacturer? is PNG ok? 💚💚💚🥰
Hello nonnie, I’m sorry for the delay in answering, but YES you can use any art program to draw the pins, whatever you feel comfortable with, I’ve used both Procreate and Paint Tool Sai for them in different occasions.
2. For the shiny metal effect I’ve created a pattern that I just clip on to the lineart layer ( that’s why it’s important to have a separate layer for the lines and another for the colors ), below is an example of how I do it:
Diagonal strokes work best in my opinion and you can change the color according to what you want your pin plating to be, most common are silver, gold, black or rose gold. The metal effect is not required or necessary at all, so don’t worry too much about it — I only apply it to give my backers an idea of how the final product is going to look, but I’ve also seen many backers just skip that so if you want to do it, I think it looks cool but over all it’s really not required ;u;
3. I personally prefer to save my files as vectors / .ai ( Adobe Illustrator vectors ) since that’s what is easiest for the manufacturers to use and I can make sure the proof they provide is identical that way — but most manufacturers can work just fine with png or jpeg or psd ( basically anything ) as well since they do have special designers to do the vectorizing for you if you don’t already have a vector / ai file.
I hope this helps and please don’t hesitate to ask if you have more questions ♡ I will try to respond quicker from now on ;o; ♡ ♡ ♡
