Custom Logo Hardware for Luxury Handbag Brands: Four Routes, the Depth and Stroke Figures Behind Them and the Checklist Before the Die

What Branding on Metal Has to Survive

A logo on a fitting is read at arm's length, in three dimensions, under shop lighting that it did not choose. That is a harder set of conditions than a logo on a card or a screen, and it rules out a surprising amount of artwork.

Three properties decide whether the mark works. Depth, which governs whether it casts a shadow and is therefore visible at all. Stroke width, which governs whether the finest part of the artwork survives the process. And draft, which governs whether the part comes out of the die without the relief being dragged.

Artwork that has only ever existed flat usually fails the second of these. A hairline serif at 0.1 mm is perfectly legible on a screen and disappears entirely in metal, so the first step is always a redraw rather than a file transfer.

The Four Routes to a Logo on Metal

Every branded fitting uses one of four routes, and the choice is made on depth and durability first and on cost second.

The last route is often misused. A laser mark is shallow enough that it disappears under a plated layer and under a season of handling, so it suits identification rather than identity.

Design Rules: What a Logo Can and Cannot Be in Metal

A small number of geometric rules settle most of the redraw work, and they are worth applying before anything is sent to a toolmaker.

• Minimum stroke width: 0.15 mm for laser, 0.20 mm for a struck die, 0.30 mm for cast. Below those figures the finest stroke fills in or breaks up.
• Minimum letter height: 1.5 mm to be legible at arm's length, with 2.0 mm preferred for a capital at the centre of a lock face.
• Internal corner radius: 0.20 mm minimum. A sharp internal corner chips the die and rounds off within the first hundred shots.
• Draft on raised relief: 3-5 degrees, so the part releases without the relief being dragged across the tool face.
• Counter shapes: keep them open. An enclosed counter in a cast mark traps metal and fills.

Letter spacing is the one rule most often ignored. A tight tracking that looks elegant on a page produces strokes that merge once the relief is formed, and the only remedy is a wider spacing than the brand guidelines specify.

Depth, Relief and Legibility: the Numbers

These are the figures to write onto the drawing, and they are the ones a toolmaker will ask for first.

Struck relief depth

0.30-0.60 mm, with 0.45 mm a good default on a lock face

Cast relief depth

Up to 0.80 mm, the deepest available and the best in low light

Chemical etch depth

0.10-0.20 mm, with soft edges that suit a monogram

Laser mark depth

0.02-0.05 mm, which is why it does not survive plating well

Logo area on a lock face

18 x 12 mm carries three to five letters comfortably

Placement tolerance

±0.30 mm from the stated datum, with rotation held to ±1 degree

Depth and plating interact. A plated layer of a few micrometres will not fill a struck relief of 0.45 mm, but it will soften an etch of 0.10 mm noticeably, which is why etched artwork is approved after plating rather than before it.

Where the Logo Should Sit

Placement is a decision about sightlines rather than about available space. A mark that is technically well made and never seen is a mark that was wasted.

• The face of a twist lock: the highest-value position on a structured bag, because the hand goes there every time.
• A plate on the front panel: the traditional position, but it competes with the leather and needs a deeper relief to register.
• The zip puller: small, handled constantly, and best carrying a mark rather than a full wordmark.
• The underside of a strap end or a D-ring plate: a quiet position that rewards the customer who looks, and photographs badly.
• A foot or the base: avoid. It is abraded continuously and the mark will be gone within a season.

One mark per bag is usually enough. Two marks on a single silhouette, on the lock and on the plate, read as insecurity rather than confidence, and they double the tooling for no gain in recognition.

Checklist Before the Die Is Cut

This is the page to complete before any tooling is commissioned. Every line here is inexpensive to change now and costly afterwards.

Tooling, Lot Sizes and the Calendar

Branded hardware adds a tooling step to the calendar, and the step is longer than most first collections allow for.

Plan the die before the sampling window opens rather than inside it. A hardened steel die at 15-22 days does not fit inside a 6-10 working days of sampling window, and discovering that in week two costs the season a month.

Protecting the Design

A die is a physical asset that embodies the mark, and two written decisions about it prevent most later disagreements.

• Agree in writing who owns the die, and on what terms it may be used for another client's work: the answer should be that it may not.
• Agree what happens to the die between seasons, including how long it is held and who pays to refurbish it.
• Register the mark before the fitting is photographed, since a mark in public use is harder to protect afterwards.
• Keep the tool drawing as well as the finished die, so a lost tool can be remade without a reverse-engineering exercise.
• Record the finishing standard alongside the die, because the same mark in two finishes reads as two different houses.

The ownership line is the one that matters commercially. A die paid for by the house and held at the fitting maker is normal; a die that may be run for someone else is not, and that clause is worth reading twice.

How the Logo Is Approved

Approval is a physical comparison against a sealed reference, not a photograph on a screen.

1. Pull three pieces from the first shots of the die and inspect them under raking light at 45 degrees.
2. Measure the relief depth and confirm it sits within the stated band for the route chosen.
3. Confirm placement against the datum at ±0.30 mm and rotation at ±1 degree, on the assembled fitting.
4. Plate the three pieces and approve the artwork again afterwards, since plating softens shallow relief.
5. Seal one approved piece as the reference and keep a second on the line for comparison during the run.

Raking light is not a nicety. A relief viewed flat-on looks identical at 0.10 mm and at 0.45 mm; viewed at 45 degrees the difference is obvious, and that is the view a customer will have.

Common Faults and Their Causes

Five faults account for most rejected branded fittings, and each has a single cause that is preventable at the drawing stage.

Our programme runs export experience since 2014 across 7 production lines with about 200,000 pcs per month of capacity, delivered through our validated partner factory Quanzhou Yingming Bags, an SGS-validated site, with inspection at AQL 2.5 (ISO 2859-1) and handover on FOB Xiamen terms.

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