AuthentiKan

This is a gup certificate for the United States Taekwondo Academy in San Antonio, Texas. Please see USTA Black Belt Certification post for a detailed review of the concept behind the certificate design.

Some martial arts school owners think rank certificates are not as important as black belt certificates and thus try to save money by buying stock certificate papers from local office supply stores and doing a DIY design or using certificate templates from a CD.

That is the wrong approach.

Gup, or rank, certificates are very important. They have the potential to become billboards at your student’s home or office for years or even a lifetime. A typical school will issue five times more ranking certificates to students than black belt certificates. The price difference between a certificate professionally designed just for your school and a DIY certificate that looks like it could be from any school is less than 50 cents per certificate. An amateur design is as obvious as a new student trying to pretend that he is a black belt. A high quality professional certificate will bring you more students, whereas a cheap certificate will sometimes discredit the school. Over the long term, it is cheaper to have your certificates professionally done than to try to save a few cents.

This gup certificate is press-printed on standard letter-size cardstock. It is unique to the school and reinforces USTA’s branding.

This certificate is designed with the belt line blank to allow the appropriate belt color to be added when printing a rank certificate. On the example above, orange belts are printed on the certificate.

Unlike the black belt certificate, which has the standard text preprinted, for this gup certificate we leave the bottom half blank so it is more flexible and can be used for different purposes.

A certificate like this enhances the branding of the school and makes students feel like they are earning something important. The document is a great encouragement for your good students.