Design: prepare artwork for the coin faces
Build a challenge coin face that looks intentional in 2D and remains dependable when it becomes geometry. This guide covers composition, alpha-aware artwork, text layout, and the checks worth making before you model.
What the Design page looks like
The workspace gives you two 1024 × 1024 canvases: front above, back below. The circle is a rim guide, not a crop boundary. It helps you keep lettering and ornaments at a consistent visual distance from the edge.
Use the left tools to add images, text, and layers. Build from large to small: first establish the silhouette and main emblem, then hierarchy, then lettering and small marks. This keeps the design readable after it is viewed at an angle in 3D.
Leave a visual safety margin inside the rim whenever the design permits. It gives later edge treatment and manufacturing tolerances room without forcing important letters into a transition area.
Upload your artwork
Click Upload on the left, drag an image into the dashed box, or click Browse. PNG and JPG both work, up to 10 MB. Prefer PNG whenever the intended coin outline depends on transparency.
The image lands on the challenge coin face at full size. Drag it to move, drag the corner handles to resize, or use the sliders in the panel. Keep a note of the original image size if the same source must be aligned on both faces.
Avoid enlarging a low-resolution logo until its edge pixels become visible. A clean source with a deliberate silhouette produces a calmer side wall and cleaner rounded transitions later.
Front and back are separate
Above the canvases are the Front / Back tabs. Each face keeps its own artwork and later receives its own depth map, so select the intended face before importing or editing.
A challenge coin naturally supports two related compositions: an emblem or unit mark on the front, then a motto, date, number, or secondary mark on the back. Treat them as a pair: similar margin, type scale, and visual weight make the physical object feel deliberate.
The Layers panel
Click Layers and everything on this face is listed: images, text, one row each.
Click a row to select it on the canvas; drag rows to change stacking order; the little eye hides an object without deleting it.
Adding text
Click Add Text and type in the box. Add places plain text; Add Curved Text lays the letters along an arc — useful for text around a challenge coin rim.
A slider bends the arc further or flatter; bent to the max, the text wraps all the way around the challenge coin.
Moving and resizing
Select anything and the toolbar above wakes up: undo, duplicate, center, flip, mirror, layer order…
Center is the one you will use most — it puts the selected object exactly in the middle of the coin face. When an image is selected, its panel even shows size as a percentage of the challenge coin base diameter.
The whole square canvas is yours
The circle on the canvas is only a rim guide, not a cutting line. Everything you design inside the square canvas is preserved — corners included — so the full 1024 × 1024 space is yours to use.
In practice most motifs gather near the circle because the challenge coin face is round, but corner ornaments, square frames, and patterns that fill the whole canvas are all perfectly fine.
Treat transparency as part of the model
For challenge coin geometry, the alpha channel is not decoration. It decides where the body exists, where a hole is cut, and where a side wall must be generated. A beautiful RGB image with accidental transparent pixels can therefore produce an unstable outline.
Before entering Model, inspect the final artwork at 100% zoom. Remove isolated transparent specks, avoid one- or two-pixel bridges, and make intentional holes clearly separated from nearby borders. If the front and back are meant to be symmetric, their alpha masks should overlap exactly.
This is the most valuable preflight check in the whole workflow. It is faster to correct a mask in Design than to compensate for an unintended contour with depth, materials, or camera angle later.
Common questions
Uploaded the wrong asset? Use the clear button at a canvas's top-right; a confirmation appears first, and Ctrl+Z remains available for recent edits.
An image that appears to have disappeared is often on the other face, hidden under another layer, or outside the current canvas view. Check the face tabs, then the Layers panel, before importing it again.
When a layout will be reused, duplicate the approved face or export a reference image before experimentation. It is the fastest way to preserve alignment while trying alternatives.