Laser engraving on leather is a subtractive process with a bloom: the beam removes material and the surrounding hide darkens slightly from the heat. That bloom is what gives engraved leather its contrast, and it is also what eats fine detail.

Everything gets slightly thicker

A one-point line does not engrave as a one-point line. The char spreads a fraction beyond the cut on both sides, so thin strokes come out heavier than drawn and very thin ones merge together.

As a rule of thumb, strokes below about half a millimetre at final patch size will not hold as separate lines. That is far coarser than screen or print, and it is the single most common surprise.

Negative space closes before lines do

The gaps inside letters — the counter of an O, the space between two close strokes, the gap between a symbol and its ring — fill in first, because bloom is coming at them from both sides.

Open those gaps deliberately in an engraving version of the artwork. Widening a counter slightly is almost invisible at a glance and is the difference between a legible mark and a dark blob.

Solid fills behave differently from outlines

A large solid engraved area removes a lot of material and can look scorched or uneven, especially on a pale hide. An outlined version of the same mark usually reads better and looks more like leatherwork than like printing.

Where a solid is essential, keep it compact and expect a texture rather than a perfectly flat tone. That texture is characteristic of the material, not a fault.

Contrast depends on the hide tone

Engraving on a pale natural hide gives strong dark-on-light contrast and is the most legible combination. On a dark brown hide the char is much closer to the surrounding colour, so the mark reads as texture and relief rather than as a graphic.

Neither is wrong. But if your logo has to be readable across a room, pale hide; if you want it subtle and tactile, dark hide.

Simplify one level, then simplify again

Taglines, registered marks, web addresses and secondary lines almost never survive at patch size. A mark, a name, and at most one short line is the realistic budget.

Everything you remove makes what remains stronger. This is the advice customers resist most and thank us for afterwards.

Always proof on the real thing

A screen render of an engraving is a drawing of an outcome, not the outcome. We send an engraving proof at actual patch size on the actual hide tone before any run, and it is where almost every artwork adjustment on this site actually gets made.

Send vector art if you have it and a photograph of anything you are colour matching. We will return both your original and an engraving-adjusted version so you can compare them properly.