Engraving Artwork: What A Manufacturer Needs From You

Vector, and why the format is not pedantry

Artwork for a bottle is reproduced small. A mark occupying a few centimetres has to be rebuilt at that size by the machine, and a vector file is a set of instructions that redraws cleanly at any scale. A PNG lifted from a website is a grid of pixels sized for a screen, so enlarging or shrinking it blurs edges, and on a single-tone etch a blurred edge becomes a ragged one. If the only file in the building is a raster logo, the honest answer is that somebody has to redraw it first, and that is a task with its own timeline.

Convert type to outlines

Convert every piece of type to outlines, curves or paths before sending. A file still containing live text depends on the exact font being installed wherever it is opened, and when it is not, the software substitutes another face, often without announcing it. The substitution is usually spotted at the first-off stage, which means a day lost. Outlined type cannot shift, cannot resubstitute and cannot be edited by accident. It also sidesteps the licensing question of handing a foundry's font file to a supplier.

Size in millimetres, placement from a datum

Two numbers remove most of the ambiguity in a brief. The first is the final reproduced width of the mark in millimetres. Reasonably large and like the picture are not instructions a jig can be set to; a stated width is. The second is placement, given as a distance from a datum that exists on the physical bottle, typically the height from the base to the centre of the mark, plus whether it is centred on the seam or offset from it. Expressed that way, your intention and the operator's setup become the same sentence.

Colour references for printing, one tone for etching

For UV printing, send exact colour references rather than an impression. A screen render is not a specification, and a colour printed onto a coloured steel body behaves differently again. For etching there is no colour decision at all, because the laser exposes bare steel and the mark emerges as one tone. So a logo built on a gradient, a drop shadow or a tonal fill has no etchable form until somebody flattens it. Do that flattening yourself and send the single-tone version alongside the original, or the operator ends up deciding what your brand looks like.

A short checklist before you send

Check five things. The file is vector. The type is outlined. The mark width is stated in millimetres. Placement is measured from the base. And there is a single-tone variant if the job is etched. Add one line naming which bottle and how many units of it, since the floor for a branded run is 25 units per SKU and a jig is set per body. A brief carrying all of that can be quoted and set up on the day it arrives, which is the point at which a 7 to 14 day lead time genuinely starts.

Disclosure

HYV decorates bottles to the specifications this page asks for, so the checklist reflects what our own setup needs and another supplier may want the file differently. One thing you can verify without us: open your logo file and try to select a single letter with the type tool. If you can edit it, the text is still live and has not been outlined, and you have found the problem yourself before anyone else does. One thing HYV is not the answer for: rebuilding a brand identity. We can flatten a logo for etching, but redrawing a raster mark into usable vector art is a design job rather than a production one.

Related reading: writing a bottle design brief for a manufacturer, laser etching vs uv printing on steel bottles and logo printed water bottles india methods and costs.