Designing a Coin

[+Coyote's Girl]

OK, so it's not like I'll ever, ever have the kind of money it takes to get coins minted but I had a few questions for those that design coins about coin design:

 

1. When designing a coin, what scale is best to work with?

2. How complicated are you allowed to get?

(and now getting to the fun story part)

3. What is the hardest thing to get the folks at the mint to do your way?

 

I'm bored and need a creative outlet, so I thought I'd toss down a few designs and see what I thought. Again, it's not like they'l ever go to mint, but it'll be fun to do anyway.

[+tsunrisebey]

OK, so it's not like I'll ever, ever have the kind of money it takes to get coins minted but I had a few questions for those that design coins about coin design:

 

1. When designing a coin, what scale is best to work with?

2. How complicated are you allowed to get?

(and now getting to the fun story part)

3. What is the hardest thing to get the folks at the mint to do your way?

 

I'm bored and need a creative outlet, so I thought I'd toss down a few designs and see what I thought. Again, it's not like they'l ever go to mint, but it'll be fun to do anyway.

 

I can only answer from my experience and perspective;

 

1. I hand draw all designs and I draw to scale. For some odd reason I feel the compulsion to draw it how it needs to look so I can tell if it will work. I have only done 2 designs larger than the coin. I think most of the graphic artists use larger scaling

 

2. As complicated as the mint will allow. I've been told 'impossible to do' a number of times. You see Mackey's new 3D edging coin, that is cutting edge right there and inspiring.

 

3. It's not so much getting them to do things your way that I find difficult, it's getting them to understand what I mean or am trying to relay in concept (language barrier).

 

Have fun

Edited January 21, 2009 by tsunrisebey

[+J10fly]

Tsun hit that right on the head!

[+ECplus3]

I've only got one coin under my belt. I have another that I am currently waiting for the dies to be completed and samples made, and another in the planning stages. For all three of these I have used a coin vendor to act as an intermediary between myself and the mint.

 

So, with my limited knowledge:

 

1. I work with Adobe Illustrator and work at a very large scale, but I am constantly reducing the size to 1:1 scale to make sure the detail can still be seen. Oddly I can't draw to save my life if given a pencil, but don't seem to have a problem on the computer, as long as I have a good mouse.

 

2. I may be way off here, but it seems like the mints have a set price for various standard things: 3d, two-tone, edge dies, etc. If you ask for something that pushes the envelope a bit, the mint will tell you it can't be done rather than change their pricing formula and give you a price that can get it done. I had to keep pushing and keep pushing to get something done and point out numerous examples of where it had been done on other coins before the mint would budge and admit that it could be done.

 

Keep in mind that every bit of enamel is done by hand, so if you have numerous, complicated, tiny areas to fill, the mint may tell you where to go with your design.

 

3. I've only signed off on the art for two coins, so I can't definitively answer this question, but I'd say the hardest thing was to get the mint to 'understand' my revision notes. Most often it seemed they just ignored the notes and did their own thing.

[+fox-and-the-hound]

OK, so it's not like I'll ever, ever have the kind of money it takes to get coins minted but I had a few questions for those that design coins about coin design:

 

1. When designing a coin, what scale is best to work with?

2. How complicated are you allowed to get?

(and now getting to the fun story part)

3. What is the hardest thing to get the folks at the mint to do your way?

 

I'm bored and need a creative outlet, so I thought I'd toss down a few designs and see what I thought. Again, it's not like they'l ever go to mint, but it'll be fun to do anyway.

 

1) If you're asking for a pixel measure, I generally start around 2500x2500 or so depending on the shape.

 

2) Ask for the sky every time and be prepared to adjust. We only ever find out what can be done by constantly pushing the limits and seeing what makes it through (and unfortunately what doesn't).

 

3) Everything. It seems that much is often lost in translation so offer far more than you think might be necessary to explain what you want right up to and including side views if it helps. Elevation scales, etc. Think engineering blueprints or as close as you can manage and again, be prepared to bend and adjust. To date, I think I've had less than 3 finish within 95% of the way they started out in the idea stage.

 

I think new ideas might be hardest to express, but sometimes the mints will surprise you by offering something even better than you might have been thinking solution wise. Go for it, throw your designs at the wall and see which ones stick

[+scavok]

OK, so it's not like I'll ever, ever have the kind of money it takes to get coins minted but I had a few questions for those that design coins about coin design:

 

1. When designing a coin, what scale is best to work with?

2. How complicated are you allowed to get?

(and now getting to the fun story part)

3. What is the hardest thing to get the folks at the mint to do your way?

 

I'm bored and need a creative outlet, so I thought I'd toss down a few designs and see what I thought. Again, it's not like they'l ever go to mint, but it'll be fun to do anyway.

 

1. When working scale just keep your ratios correct. I.e. If you use a big piece of paper then you need to draw with a fat marker. I draw mine out real big as detailed as I possibly can do with pencil, then go over it in said marker and do my best to keep the detail already there. Its amazing what you can fit in a tiny coin!

 

2. Suprisingly. The detail with metal is not usually an issue unless it is with very fine raised lines or fine textue on 3d. The complications is when you want to fill small areas with enamel.

 

3. Being patient. I've just given in to taking the mint art in to photoshop and changing the art myself. I then circle it with neon pink and draw an arrow from the circle to a line of text (on the image) explaining what I changed. It has worked very well

 

- Don't think that not having the money can stop you. Look into presale programs from reputable middlemen. You may not make much money, if any, but you get bragging rights for designing a minted coin (:

Edited January 21, 2009 by scavok

[+Jackalgirl]

To echo what everyone else has said: I would work at a large scale, but then print out a copy at 1:1 and compare with coins already in your collection. If your lines are finer than those on anything you own, then you might want to consider bulking them up a bit -- tho note that the artists at the mint will probably bulk them up for you.

 

Doing this also helps you when it comes to deciding whether there is too much detail. If it all becomes one big blotch at 1:1, you know you have to scale back a bit.

 

I highly recommend Adobe Illustrator (or some other vector artwork) for this reason, because it's much easier to change the thickness and line quality of your lines in vector art than it is to do it in raster art.

 

Also: when you submit your artwork to a middleman or to a mint, output your graphic in a decently-sized graphic. I'm talking 1500px by 1500px if you have a lot of detail. The artists at the mint have to be able to see everything in order to understand (and process) it.

 

If your art uses mostly flat colors (i.e, is more "graphic"), output in .GIF format. It compresses better and more cleanly for art that has continuous sections of the same color. If your art involves photos (e.g., you're doing a photo insert), use .JPG.

 

If you're doing something that is terribly complicated, such as a coin with multiple levels, multiple platings, and tons of color, then I also recommend that you output three versions:

 

The die map -- showing a different color for each level, so that the mint is clear as to what is raised, what is recessed, and what is at other various levels. If you are utilizing textures, you can also use different colors to indicate which textures go where.

 

The plating map -- showing specifically what plating is to go where, using different colors for each plating

 

The color map - showing the enamel placement. Make sure you provide the colors using PMS numbers (for standard enamels -- usually, the there are only a limited number of transparent and glow-in-the-dark enamels and they're numbered; the mint or middleman will provide you with a chart).

 

Note that your mileage may vary. With a relatively simple design (2-D with only two levels, using one plating) you can put everything on a single map.

 

My $.02. : )

 

Note: with vector art, sometimes you have to output your shapes or lines as paths (or "expand" them, in Adobe terminology) in order for the mint to be able to process them. I find that this is useful to do if you choose to use a font that they don't have, or if you don't want to use single-width lines (i.e., you want thicks and thins). I've never had problems providing Adobe Illustrator files for this.

Edited January 21, 2009 by Jackalgirl

[+Eclectic Penguin]

Again, as with others, this is just my experience with designing my first 3 coins (only one has gone on sale to date and it pretty much sold out in 3 weeks - that's 200 coins!)

 

As I knew others would be interested in the development of a coin an what it takes, I kept a blog of the entire process - you can find it here: http://www.eclectic-penguin.org.uk/coin/blog4.php . I'll probably update it tonight as I haven't written much there in the last couple of weeks.

 

Anyway - from my experience of coin 1 (the penguin) & 3 (another bird themed coin to be announced here soon), I used electronic packages - the penguin was designed on Macromedia Flash as that's one of the strings in my bow and the rest of the work on the coins was done using Paintshop Pro. Once you realise the constraints of what is possible and how much metal you have to use in order to separate the enamels, work can be quite easy. As with others, I work on a very high resolution and scale down when needed so that I can zoom in on fine detail easily.

 

Once I've done with my initial design, I send it into Oakcoins and usually within a day, their artists have come back with a design of what's actually physically possible - hopefully this is very close to the original design and usually is. There's usually an iterative process of refinement before I can then order.

 

The initial coin I ordered a proof batch of 6 as I wasn't confident of my design perceptions - but now that I can visualise what the final coin will look like I probably skip this stage in future.

 

Design of the second coin was a little different, but equally as rapid becaus the mint Oakcoins use have some very talented artists. Although we haven't officially announced the launch of our coin as yet, this is a first glimpse for many of the forthcoming South Wales Geocachers coin (it's been in open discussion in our forums for some time).

 

Issue A

 

Issue B

 

We wanted a coin that featured our logo - the Geocaching G with the Welsh flag but also had something most people would recognise as having a Welsh heritage. Someone on our forum suggested a coal mine so I sent Oakcoins a couple of photos of the pithead gear of the last deep level mine in Wales (closed January 2008), along with the idea of having a celtic pattern around the rim (i included a picture of a ring with such a pattern). What came back is pretty much what's now on the coin, both front and back. For the back I sent them an image of the logo and a pointer to a web site with a Welsh flag on it for reference.

 

Originally the coin's tail side was bare apart from the G, but I came up with the idea of the wireframe dragon (now Issue A). All I did was describe what I wanted and the mint came back with Issue B as the first draft - which was slightly different from what I described - but liked so much that we're making a third die and having a split run, 50% of A and 50% of B. Both versions will have the Geocaching tracking information as this is a prerequisite of the coin being accepted by Groundspeak.

 

So, in this case, the ideas were all that were really needed with some helpful photos - most of the artwork was provided by the mint's artists apart from the South Wales Geocachers logo.

 

This coin's launch will of course be duly announced on this forum when they're ready to go on sale as will my second personal coin.

Edited January 21, 2009 by Eclectic Penguin

[+Renegade Knight]

...3. What is the hardest thing to get the folks at the mint to do your way?...

 

I've had to shelf some ideas from the mint's ability (read williness) to do the work.

 

Mints can do a stained glass type coin. They have shifted from coin thicknesses to wafers stuck into coins. I don't want a wafer. They don't want the rejection rate of the other style. I asked them how much more I'd have to pay to offset the rejection rate. Then they said they couldn't gurantee their one key person who can do this would be the one. I asked if we waited long enough for them to get to it...they said they can't do that.

 

I've had them tell me that they can't do stained glass effects of more than something like 3mm. Meanwhile I see them all over the place and that's not a limitation.

 

I've had various problems with edge art & tracking. Some can, some can't.

 

I've given them the exact art I want. "Copy this exactly" and they still can't copy it until we have gone through 12 iternation. "nope, not it, fix the reeds, nope not it, fix the reeds, nope not it, fix the reeds, nope not it, fix the reeds...

 

I get the feeling that a lot of mints keep in mind their Least Capable Staff when saying what they can and can't do.

 

The biggest thing is the language barrier and I have that problem working through an intermediary who actually speaks english..

[+BrierPatch]

Pretty interesting reading what you artists do to draw a coin, I am amazed and fascinated by the various technics and software you are using.

I use Autocad for anything I draw and alway draw 1:1 I tend to draw by typing in the distance to go in the direction to go from my present location on the drawing. An example would be (x0.023,y-0.21) I use "I & Y" for radius or curves. There is no limit to how small a line can be drawn in Autocad IE x.0001,y-.0003 can be drawn and viewed and very unuseful in designing a coin but helpful in creating a machine tolerance. Obviously I use it because I have used it for about 15 years and am comfortable with it. once something is drawn I plot it as a jpg file and fill in the color with the basic paint program that comes with windows.

Unlike the rest of you I have virtually no understanding of what a mint can and cannot do, but on the same hand I know what can be laser burned what the tolerances are for that along with plasma burning and machining. The problem I have run into is I can design something that can be easily lasercut and laser engraved braze or press welded but cannot be minted into a coin. I am limited by my perspective as a machinist/Fabricator and suffer from envey of what you artists are able to accomplish by hand and brain. But I can appreciate your work along with everyone else so keep it coming!

 

Thanks

[+Jackalgirl]

[

I've given them the exact art I want. "Copy this exactly" and they still can't copy it until we have gone through 12 iternation. "nope, not it, fix the reeds, nope not it, fix the reeds, nope not it, fix the reeds, nope not it, fix the reeds...

 

I get the feeling that a lot of mints keep in mind their Least Capable Staff when saying what they can and can't do.

 

The biggest thing is the language barrier and I have that problem working through an intermediary who actually speaks english..

 

I've had this problem too. For example, on one coin it took over one month to get one element of the coin fixed. I finally realized that they did not understand what I was saying, and the intermediary person (I was not working directly with the mint) did not tell me that they did not understand. What I finally did was submit art at a very, very large scale, with the offending part of the art circled in pink and linked to a phrase that said "this part should look like this:" and then an arrow and a detail shot of what I wanted. That did the trick (tho, in the end, the mint -- while getting the art right -- actually screwed up the die. I do not know who this mint was, but I know who they weren't, and it's the mint they're not who is the mint with whom I now do business).

[+earthrooster]

Great information, folks! Between you all I have answers to some things I've wondered about for a while. I'm going to check out that blog as well as look for more info here

 

Thanks!