Design:

     Plaques are a fine crafted item that many people love and can be a good source of income. Donating plaques to local non profit orginizations or other events as awards is a good form of advertisement and exposure.

     As an art category, the plaques are “graphic design”, which sets them apart from the other categories in several ways. I am not concerned about balance, composition, deep meaning, symbolism, originality, etc. When I am doing a plaque I am usually thinking of functionality, design, and set up.
     Even the technical rules like “don’t ever outline” mean little when working in graphic design. I do some limited shading when I do plaques because it really is part of what I love about the look of pyrography, but for the most part I am usually using 3 values in a plaque, unburned, lightly burned, and dark. I outline everything I do for a plaque; I like it to look crisp and neat. I limit the tonal range of the burning to keep good contrast in a piece. Keeping the values so defined really helps the plaque “pop” as it sets the different elements apart from each other. I rely on the value of the burn for this because in a monochromatic medium I do not have the advantage of the different colors like the ones originally on the shoulder patch. Of course the shoulder patch was embroidered, and so the lines were not very well defined, it was easy to compensate for and I just defined them better as I transferred the pattern. (Which was just a scanned copy of the shoulder patch.)
     Most of the plaques I do for the city I live in are left blank on the bottom because the city has a metal plate engraved and put onto the plaque. I try to keep the design the same distance from the top as it is from the sides, and they will center the metal plate in the void on the bottom.
     The plaque that I am using as an example was one that I was asked to do for the Fire Chief, and he wanted his done with the lettering burned onto the plaque. The idea of the setup was still the same. I keep the image on top consistent with the top edge and sides, I want it to fill the space nicely, but leave enough room for lettering on the bottom and keep enough negative space to leave the plaque looking nice. I center the words and I am usually more interested in how the size of the lettering looks than it’s distance from each side, especially when you do different names, the spacing will change. As long as the lettering is centered between the sides, and is also centered between the graphic and the bottom of the plaque, it will look good. The spacing of the lettering at the bottom is separate from the spacing of the graphic to the sides and top, and does not have to be related to or the same as the graphic spacing.

 

Lettering:

     As being a bit on the picky side, I always like things to look as perfect as I can get to it… because of that, I never freehand any lettering. I have lettering guides I can use if I am looking for a quick reference, but I normally use the text art options in Word, or WordPerfect and I can play with many different styles, layouts, fonts, and sizes to find something that I like. Using these programs you can do lettering in circles for plates, arched or “V” shapes like the city name on this plaque. You can really set up anything you want and change it fairly easy till it looks the way you want it to.
     If you wanted to you could load your graphic into the word processor which will also help you design the piece around the size and layout of the graphic, it is very simple to manipulate the graphic size in the word processor too.
     As far as just the lettering for a plaque goes, the words on the patch were part of the patch, so all I had to do was the name underneath.

 

     The one thing I am conscious as I transfer the pattern is whether the lettering is going to be positive or negative. In other words, am I going to be burning the letters, or burning around them? I always want to burn over all the transfer lines so I transfer the dark letters in by tracing the inside of the lettering, and I trace the outside of the lines of the light lettering so that as I burn, the burning covers all the transfer lines so I don’t need to remove them or worry about them showing up on my final piece. Of course this is important for lettering that is small, but it doesn’t matter on the large lettering because it won’t affect the shape of the letters as significantly if they are slightly bigger or smaller.
     I outline the letters and then fill them in dark; it gives them a clean straight look. Of course you can do lettering that is just outlining too, but you want to be more careful when transferring the lines.

     These two plaques were private commissions, and also more time and detail was put into them, the clients also had more of a say than I did as to the design and set up of the plaque. They will usually know the size, style, and orientation that they want the wood. I also send them two or three design sketches if they are unsure. Most of them will not have much input or preference as to letter size and font or other small details like that, but it is important to pay attention to all those things even when the client doesn't have a preference. Some times I will match lettering that is in the graphic, but often times I like the look of something fancy but still easy to read. Sorry I had to blur some of the lettering, but you still get a good idea of what it looked like.

 

     This plaque was one of the first wood burns that I ever did, not the best photo or my best burning, but it illustrates another idea. I will say that although my skill with the burner was new, I am proud of this piece because I designed the picture myself. I sketched and drew this up until I was happy with it and made it as a gift for my wife’s sister when she graduated school. She uses it now as her logo and I created it into a small black and white picture for her that appears on her business cards.