Here is a wonderful example of a product we designed when our customer only had a photo / existing image of what they are looking for as guidance. After going over options, and the specifics of what the customer did and did not like in the supplied example, our design team recreated the artwork by hand.
It's a tedious process — but the results are worth it. We think that the result is even better than the supplied art which is a testament to our design team, especially when the original photograph didn't have the fine detail needed for the finished product.
The items themselves are cast in 3D, and as with all our belt buckles, we incorporate a slight curve to the entire shape of the buckle — its great looking, and more comfortable. Form really does follow function with our custom products. Technically and from a reliability standpoint, all our belt buckles are thick, stout products no matter how delicate or intricate the actual design is, and are made to last for years.
The plating on this example is an antiqued genuine gold, over cast zinc. They are plated multiple times before the final application of genuine gold. The plating is highly durable, and the antiquing draws out the design elements by making higher parts lighter and "deeper" parts darker, to visually aid in the mind recognizing all the parts of the design. Text elements are usually best served by being left as one raised layer with a flattened top — or, 2D — because the raised rounded text is more difficult to read. We recommend the flat text as it is more legible and looks much better for these applications.
The border used on this particular item is a custom designed border — it's not a standard "rope" border, for instance. Virtually all aspects of this buckle are custom designed and, of course, they are then custom manufactured with meticulous attention to detail.
For more information and examples of our custom made belt buckles, click here.
Pictured here is the original photograph that was sent to us by the customer. As you can see it's worn from time and natural wear, which is why we are proud of the product we created. We hope to bring as much satisfaction from of our newly created belt buckle as did the original.
