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Acrylic Tablets: What are the options?

Acrylic tablets make a pretty versatile base for a multitude of award categories. Football awards, business awards, runner-up awards; the acrylic tablet has a lot of space for acrylic design development.

Freestanding awards as a whole are becoming increasingly popular for their contemporary style against traditional awards, and acrylic tablets are no exception. Whether you’re interested in an award that’s fresh and modern with minimal detail, or a more involved design that really emphasises your brand, an acrylic tablet might be the answer.

The runner up at the Dalziel Best Craft Butcher Skills Competition is…. Emlyn Hugill from William Slater & Sons pic.twitter.com/fv49mCredv

— Dalziel (@DalzielLtd) September 16, 2018

This week we’re highlighting just a few of the many options available when you choose an acrylic tablet. We’ll explain some of the methods we use in design and manufacture and exactly what they mean, as well as answering a few of our most common questions.

What’s so good about an acrylic tablet?

While they’re a popular starting point, no two tablets are the same. Our designers consider four options when they start designing a tablet; the brand, the event, the winner and the category. The artwork we create is tailored to you, and that means we can focus on what’s the most important part of your award.

For some clients, that’s the brand. Awards can travel with recipients all over the world, meaning your brand travels with recipients all over the award. Awards sit in offices, homes and venues and it’s vital that the branding, whether it be from a sponsor or your own, will look it’s best. Branding presentation is a hugely important component of many events, and our expert designers are familiar with working with established brand guidelines.

For others, each category might require its own artwork and we work with clients to create designs that showcase the event whatever the occasion.

How do you add detail to an acrylic tablet?

We use a ton of different methods to add detail to an acrylic tablet, but today we’re going to talk about the two most commonly utilised options.

Print

The printing process is in-house and the benefits of this are huge to not only Gaudio, but every client we work with. Our designers oversee every design from start to finish and get to experience the award before it goes out the door. Seeing each award means out designers continue to develop their use of print in new and creative ways.

We use a UV printer. This printer uses UV light to fry the ink, making it durable for transport and presentation. While it’s not invincible, UV print is clear and crisp, which is ideal for event photos, and means awards look great when they’re at home with the recipient.

Most importantly, this print can be pantone-matched. Unlike other manufacturing methods, there’s no need to settle for something that’s almost perfect. With a colour-matched print, your logo, sponsor’s logo, or even photographs are printed with accurate colour and shading.

The PEI Awards feature a dual-layer print. This means the tablets are printed on the back and the front, adding a level of depth.

Additional Raised Detail

Additional raised detail covers a breadth of materials and manufacturing methods, but the most common is acrylic detail. We can also use solid aluminium or wood to add detail to acrylic tablets.

The Keep Britain Tidy tablets have a solid acrylic backing to compliment their brand palette. This adds some physical depth to the awards and is particularly suited to designs with minimal print.

The Best Craft Butcher Awards are solid white acrylic tablets with metallic acrylic detail and print. The gold acrylic caps add some extra height and the integration of the branding makes them stand-out trophies.

Can I have each tablet personalised?

Yes! We don’t charge for individual personalisation, so every tablet can have a winners’ name.

Ready for a free design?

Designs from Gaudio are completely free of charge and no-obligation.

The first step in ordering a bespoke award is creating a brief. A brief helps our designers get an understanding of exactly what you’re looking for.

Getting the most out of your brief can be difficult, so we provide a free brief template on our website here. It asks a few of the questions your designer will consider when working on your award.

Think about the aspects of your branding you’d most like to emphasise, the quantity you’ll need, and what level of variation you might need – this could include awards for first, second and third place, or individual names for each tablet.