Ordering custom medals for the first time can feel like it involves more decisions than it actually does. Once you know what to prepare, the process is straightforward. This guide walks through what to think about before you order personalized medals in Dubai, so you arrive at a design that fits your event without unnecessary back and forth.
Before You Start: Know What Kind of Event You Are Recognizing
The single most useful thing you can do before requesting a quote or starting the design process is to be clear, in your own mind, about what the medal is actually recognizing. A race with a stopwatch result is a very different achievement from a school year of consistent effort, and the medal that suits one may not suit the other. Taking a few minutes to write down exactly what the medal is meant to represent, whether that is finishing a race, reaching a work anniversary, or completing a program, makes every decision after this point easier, from choosing a format to writing the final wording.
Step One: Decide on the Format
Start by deciding whether your event needs a ranked gold, silver, and bronze set or a single custom design given to every participant. This depends on how your event recognizes achievement. Competitive events with a clear result usually suit a ranked set, while participation-based events, graduations, and staff recognition programs usually work better with a single design. If you are unsure which fits your event, our guide on choosing the right medal finish covers this decision in more depth.
Step Two: Gather Your Event Details
Before starting the design process, it helps to have the following ready:
- The event or program name as you want it to appear on the medal
- The date or year of the event
- Any logo or artwork you want included
- The wording for the achievement being recognized, such as a category or title
- An estimated number of medals needed
Having these details ready before you start speeds up the design process considerably, since most of the back and forth in personalized orders comes from confirming these exact details partway through.
Step Three: Choose Your Products
Select the medal products that match your chosen format. For ranked events, this means the Customize Gold Award Medal, Customize Silver Award Medal, and Customize Bronze Award Medal. For participation-based events, the Customized Award Medals option is the better fit. You can browse all of these together in our custom medal collection.
Step Three and a Half: Deciding Who Approves the Design
For schools and companies, more than one person is often involved in approving a medal design, such as a headteacher, an events coordinator, or a marketing team reviewing brand consistency. Deciding who has final sign-off before the design process begins avoids delays later, particularly for larger orders where the design needs to be confirmed before production can proceed. If multiple stakeholders need to review the design, it helps to gather their feedback together rather than sequentially, so changes are not made in several separate rounds.
Step Four: Confirm the Design Before Finalizing
Once your details are submitted, review the proposed design carefully before confirming, checking spelling, dates, and logo placement in particular, since these are the details most likely to be overlooked when an order is placed quickly. If your event includes several categories or age groups with different wording, double check that each variation is accounted for.
Step Five: Plan Around Your Event Date
Personalized items take time to design and produce, so it is worth starting the process with enough lead time before your event date, particularly for larger orders or events with multiple medal categories. This is especially relevant for schools and clubs running annual events, where the order can often be planned well ahead of time once the previous year's design is on file.
Ordering for First-Time Events Versus Recurring Ones
If this is the first time your school, club, or company is ordering custom medals, expect the first order to take a little more back and forth as you settle on a design direction. Once that design exists, future orders for the same event or program tend to move faster, since the template and approval process are already established. Keeping a record of the final approved design and the details used is worth doing for any organization planning to repeat the event, since it removes the need to rebuild the design from scratch each time.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
The most common issues with personalized medal orders come from incomplete details submitted early, such as an event date that changes after the design has already been started, or a logo file that is not ready in time. Confirming your event details before beginning the design process avoids most of these issues entirely.
Working Efficiently with Multiple Categories
Larger events, particularly school sports days or multi-round competitions, often include several categories that each need their own wording, such as different age groups, different events, or different achievement types within the same program. Organizing this information in a simple list before starting the design process, rather than sending it over piecemeal, makes it much easier to keep every category correct and consistent. It also reduces the chance of a category being missed entirely, which is one of the more frustrating errors to catch after an order has already been finalized.
Ready to Order Your Medals
For a full overview of our medal options, visit our main custom medals in Dubai page. If you are ordering for a sports day, see our guide on medals for sports days and races, and for corporate recognition programs, see our guide on corporate award medals. If you have questions before placing an order, reach out through our contact page.
