How to send me a logo that will actually embroider well
Sep 13, 2026
Forty hats land on a conference table and the two words under your logo are a smudge. That is the thing I am trying to save you from, and it gets decided long before anything touches a machine.
Here is what I look for when a logo comes in, what I will probably change, and what to send me.
Send me whatever you have right now
A screenshot off your website is enough to start. A photo of your sign is enough. I would rather see the rough version today and tell you what it needs than wait a week for a perfect file. If the logo turns out to need work, I will say so in the first reply.
Thread is not ink
That is the whole thing in one line. A printer lays down a picture. A needle lays down a line of thread, over and over, and every one of those lines has a width you can feel with your thumb.
So a few things that look fine on a screen do not survive the trip:
- Photographs and gradients. Thread cannot fade from one color into another. Every color is a hard edge and a needle change.
- Drop shadows and glows. Same reason. They become a solid outline or they go away.
- Hairline strokes. Anything much thinner than a millimeter closes up into a lump once it is stitched.
- Tiny text. Lettering under about a quarter inch tall stops being readable. On a hat that usually means the tagline is the part that has to go.
The hat is smaller than you think
The front of a cap gives you roughly five inches across and a little over two inches tall, and the curve eats into that. A logo built for the side of a truck has to be simplified to live there. Usually that means dropping the tagline, thickening the thin parts, and letting the mark carry it.
That is not a downgrade. A simplified mark stitched cleanly reads from across a room. A faithful one stitched small reads as fuzz.
Count your colors
Every thread color is a needle and a stop. Three to six colors is comfortable and looks rich. Past that you are paying for complexity nobody can see from four feet away. If your brand has a twelve color illustration, I will usually come back with a two or three color version of it for thread, and most people like it more than they expected to.
What file to send
- Best: a vector file. AI, EPS, SVG, or a PDF that still has live vector art inside it. Whoever built your logo has one of these.
- Good: a large PNG with a transparent background. Bigger is better.
- Workable: a JPEG, a screenshot, a photo of a business card. I can start from these, though a rough one may need to be redrawn before it can be stitched.
If you have no idea which of those you have, send the file and I will tell you.
The stitch file, once
A machine cannot read a picture. Your artwork gets converted into a stitch file: every needle drop, every thread change, every bit of underlay, mapped out in order. That happens one time. It is a one time fee I pass straight through to you at cost, and how complicated your artwork is decides what it comes to, which is why I quote it once I have seen the file. After that the file stays on hand, so every reorder you place skips this step entirely.
What comes back to you
A mockup, usually within a day. Colors, placement, size, and a note on anything I changed and why. Nothing goes on a machine until you have seen it and said yes.
