Embroidery is definitely the oldest form of corporate ID decoration. It is also the most hard wearing.

It certainly gives a high quality feel to garments. The other great thing is you don’t have to worry about how many colours there are in your logo, it will not cost any more.

DIGITIZATION

If you want to embroider your logo, you will have to have the image DIGITIZED. This is a one off process that converts the graphical image of your logo into stitches. The file can then be downloaded into the computerised embroidery machine, which in turn will embroider your garments. This usually costs some where between £15- £50 depending on the size and complexity of your logo.

If you have a business or school the cost of digitization is not too much of a problem because you can use it each time you need some more garment decorated with the same logo or design. So your company logo or your school emblem prbably will not change for many years if at all.
Whereas embroidery can be used for garments such as jackets, which are often difficult to print, because of their bulk, I would not recommend it for t-shirts. This is because t-shirts are usually made of quite thin material, that tends to pucker when embroidered. The other problem is that t-shirts are usually worn next to the skin and the stitching can chafe against the skin.

IMAGE DEFINITION

Because your image will be made up of actual stitches, it gives a very grainy effect. Some say this is part af the charm, but some logos loose their appeal when the logo is embroidered rather than printed. I would suggest that you make the desition as to wether you are going to print or embroider the logo or crest before you get it designed.

COST

For small quantities of garments ( under 20 ) having to get the logo digitized, can make the job expensive. For larger quntities and repeated orders this problem looses its impact, making embroidery quite a cost effect method for decorating your uniform or workwear.

This applies only to smaller images. Larger images can be very expensive because they take a long time to manufacture. The stitch sizes stays the same so you have to have many more stitches for larger designs. An A4 sized image can take over an hour to embroider even on a high speed machine.