What Your Club Crest Actually Looks Like at 22 mm
7 August 2026
A golf club crest is usually drawn for things much bigger than a golf ball: the clubhouse sign, the letterhead, the back of a polo shirt. Then it has to survive being reduced to a 22 mm circle — about the size of a 5c piece — printed onto a surface that is both curved and covered in dimples.
Most crests make that trip fine. But it's worth knowing what happens on the way down, because the difference between a crisp ball and a muddy one is usually decided in the original artwork, not in the printer.
The maths of shrinking a crest
Work in ratios and it gets very concrete very quickly. Take a crest supplied at 1,000 pixels tall. On the ball, that whole 1,000 px becomes 22 mm. So every element scales by the same factor:
| Element at 1,000 px tall | Share of the crest | Size on the ball |
|---|---|---|
| The main shield or emblem | 70% | ~15 mm |
| A motto banner across the base | 10% | ~2.2 mm |
| "EST. 1950" under the banner | 5% | ~1.1 mm |
| A 3 px keyline around the shield | 0.3% | ~0.07 mm |
That last row is the one that catches people out. A hairline border that looks elegant on a letterhead is, at ball scale, thinner than the ink can reliably hold — it either disappears or breaks up into a dotted line.
Our working rule at proofing: text wants to land at 1.5 mm or taller, and fine lines want real weight behind them. In the table above, the motto banner is fine, the EST. date is marginal, and the keyline is gone.
What survives, and what doesn't
Looking across the club and society jobs on our examples page, the pattern is consistent.
Holds up well:
- Bold silhouettes. A tree, a bird, a shield outline — shapes read at any size.
- Solid colour blocks. Flat areas of navy or green reproduce cleanly.
- Short text in a decent weight. A club name in caps across the base is legible.
- Detailed line illustrations, if the lines have weight. The FARK Golf eagle on our examples page is genuinely intricate and comes through — because the strokes are drawn heavy enough to survive the reduction.
Struggles:
- Mottos in script. Latin mottos are usually set small and in a connected script. Both work against you.
- Founding dates in small caps. Almost always the first thing to go illegible.
- Hairline keylines and hatching. Heraldic hatching (those fine parallel lines that denote colour in traditional crests) turns into a flat tone.
- Drop shadows and gradients on tiny elements. They add mush, not depth, at 22 mm.
- Anything that relies on white gaps between elements. Two dark shapes separated by a 0.1 mm white line will read as one shape.
The fix is usually a "ball version" of the crest
The instinct is to shrink the crest until the smallest element is legible — which leaves the main emblem tiny and the ball looking empty. The better move is a simplified variant drawn specifically for small reproduction. In practice that means:
- Drop the motto banner and the EST. line. Nobody reads them on a golf ball anyway. You reclaim the full 22 mm for the emblem, which then lands large and confident.
- Thicken the keylines, or delete them.
- Close up tight white gaps so shapes stay distinct.
- Keep the colours. This is the one place you don't need to economise — the print is full-colour UV digital, so a six-colour crest costs exactly what a one-colour crest costs. There are no screen fees and no per-colour charges, which is the opposite of how pad-printed balls have always worked.
If your club has an official "small use" or "app icon" version of the crest in its brand guidelines, that's usually the right file to send.
You see it before it's printed
None of this has to be sorted out in advance. Send whatever the club has — vector is ideal, but a large JPEG is workable — and our art team prepares a proof showing the design as it will sit in the 22 mm area. If the motto has gone to mush, that's where you'll see it, and where we'll suggest the cut. Nothing is printed until you approve it.
That's also the point at which to decide between single- and double-sided printing. Clubs often put the crest on one side and a plain club name, event date or sponsor mark on the other — which is a neater answer than trying to cram all of it into one circle.
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Frequently asked questions
How big is the print area on a golf ball?
Each design area is a 22 mm round print area — roughly the size of a 5c piece. You can print single-sided (one area) or double-sided (a second area on the opposite side). Full details are on our printing information page.
Will my club crest fit on a golf ball?
Almost always, but it usually needs simplifying. Crests are drawn for signage and letterheads, where a motto banner or an EST. date reads fine. Scaled into a 22 mm circle, those elements can drop below the size where they read as letters. We show you exactly how it lands on the ball at the proof stage before anything is printed.
How small can text be on a printed golf ball?
As a rule of thumb we want text to land at about 1.5 mm tall or more on the ball. Below that it stops reading as words and starts reading as a grey smudge. On a 22 mm crest, that means motto text should be at least about 7% of the crest's height in your original artwork.
Does a multi-colour crest cost more to print?
No. It's a full-colour UV digital process, so a six-colour crest costs exactly the same to print as a single-colour one — no screen fees, no setup, no per-colour charge.
What file should I send for a club crest?
A vector file (EPS or SVG) if you have one — it scales to 22 mm with no loss of edge quality. If your club only has a JPEG or PNG, send the largest version you have and we'll work with it.