AuthentiKan

Our Black Belt Certification Package provides 11” x 17” certificates. However, since it is easier to purchase 11” x 14” frames, we often recommend 11” x 17” certificates with a perforation separating the paper into an 11” x 14” certificate and an 11” x 3” record tab.

Also, printing a large certificate from a computer requires a wide format printer that will take 11” x 17” paper.

Except for black belt certificates, we recommend you stick with the standard letter size (8.5” x 11”) certificate for these reasons:

• It is more economical
• It works with most desktop printers
• It is easy to carry and store
• It allows for more frame selections

A large certificate does not necessarily communicate more prestige than a small one. We suggest that school owners invest in nice, quality frames so their students will hang their certificates in a highly visible place instead of storing them in a drawer.

Q: I would like to have a regular letter-size certificate and a special larger black belt certificate. Do I have to purchase two different certificate packages?

A: Yes. Even though your two certificates will have a consistent look to reinforce your visual branding, the differences in the length and width ratios mean that our designers cannot simply scale up or down. We can use the same design elements, but the two completely different sizes require two different designs.

Q: How about if I want to order five different ranking certificates and the only difference is the color of the border to represent the corresponding belt color?

A: Using different colors can be a good way to have multiple levels of certificates, especially for a large school that can use thousands of each in a few years. For this type of project, we offer 20% off after the first set.

Q: Should I save money by using stock certificate papers?

A: The price of having professionals design your martial arts certificates can seem quite high—about $1,000 for 500 copies, or an average of $2 per certificate. That’s quite a chunk of money up front. At first glance, using stock paper or printing the whole certificate with an inkjet printer appears less expensive.

But think about the difference between short-term price and long-term cost.

A cheaply made certificate saves you pennies but costs you thousands of dollars yearly. Why? Because a top quality certificate conveys the message that yours is a top quality school. You value your students and you want to give them the best. That top quality certificate will be proudly displayed and become your billboard at someone’s home or office for years or even a lifetime at no further cost to you.

Five hundred certificates sounds like a lot, unless you have a long-term view of 10 or 20 years. If you need only 20 certificates this year, do you think you can grow to 30 next year? The fact is, if you issue 20 ranking certificates the first year, 30 the next year, 40 the following year, and grow by only 10 more students per year, in 9 years you will issue a total of 540 certificates.

You can easily spend $1,000 in a couple months dining out, going to Starbucks, watching cable TV, and paying high credit card interest, none of which helps you build your career as a professional martial artist. What if you spent that $1,000 on five hundred concrete advertisements of your professionalism in the form of quality custom certificates? That’s a smart investment, the kind that will be very likely to bring you new students.

Receive a FREE 156-page workbook for creating martial arts certificates.

To receive the free workbook, click here to fill out your name and e-mail address. You will receive a confirmation e-mail within 2 minutes (check your Junk E-mail or Spam folder just in case it ends up there). Click the confirmation link inside the e-mail and the workbook will be sent to you.

We constantly make improvements to this workbook, so your workbook comes with a subscription to our templates updates. You will receive notification when a new version becomes available.

This is a FREE subscription. You can stop future notifications by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the e-mail.

We don’t know how many students you have, but say, for example, you have 50 students and on average one gets 2 certificates a year. And assume you have some students who leave and some new coming in, so an average growth of 10% annually. In five years, you will need 613 certificates. If you gave each student 4 certificates a year, say 2 gup certificates and 2 award certificates, you will need twice as many certificates.

Here is a worksheet for you to write down your own estimates. On each type of certificate, enter high estimate on the top row and low estimate on the bottom row.

To start a certification design process, we recommend collecting and making the following information available for our designers. You will receive a workbook, you will see a set of questions and checklists that will help you gather information.

Design Checklist

1. Logos (preferably as vector graphics or, if not available, high resolution pictures). This is so we can make sure that your logo stays clear and sharp and is not pixilated.
2. School motto.
3. Rough sketches of your ideal certificate if you have an idea. We have some great templates to use as starting points, but we want our customers to be part of the process of designing their own certificates.
4. Any translations you already have that you want to be included.
5. Anything else you want included or feel we should know.

The Eight Steps of Authentikan Martial Arts Certificate Design Process

STEP 1: SURVEY

Within 48 hours after placing an order, you will receive a personal e-mail giving the estimated completion date and asking questions we may have regarding your project.

Your Job : You may be asked to mail, e-mail, or fax copies of certificates you like. You may provide a rough sketch or layout of your own design.

STEP 2: CONCEPT

We will create up to 3 concepts. Concepts are generic ideas identifying the basic border and style of your certificate. They are delivered in black and white.

STEP3: REDRAW

If you do not select one of the 3 concepts, we provide 3 new concepts within 3 business days.

STEP 4: DESIGN

We will develop 3 designs inspired by 1 or 2 concepts you have chosen. We provide you with color designs.

Redesign: We can develop a new set of 3 designs within 3 business days if you are not satisfied with the first 3 designs.

STEP 5: REVISIONS

We will provide revisions from the chosen design. Color tones, layout, and borders are refined until you are completely satisfied. Each new set is provided within 3 business days.

STEP 6: TEMPLATES

We will prepare award and ranking templates of your certificate so you can use them for different purposes.

If you need a specific template or wording, we can reformat to meet your need.

STEP 7: DESIGN DELIVERY

All files are packaged in a zip file and e-mailed to you or made available for download. Average project completion time is about two weeks.

STEP 8: CERTIFICATE DELIVERY

Printed certificates, when ordered, are shipped within 7 business days after the design is completed.

Q: When is the best time to start a certification design process?

A: Our normal process takes about one month to complete. However, depending on our project load, it could take longer. We suggest starting the project two, if not three, months prior to your black belt promotion. The more time we have, the better the quality of work will be.

Use our workbook as a guide for gathering information. Take your time as you go through all the questions in the project form. Really give your certificates some thought.

We are happy to present the United States Taekwondo Academy (USTA) Black Belt Certificate!

The certificate is press-printed on large (11” x 17”) linen cardstock with a perforation to separate the certificate from the record tab. The result is an 11” x 14” certificate, the standard size for which you can find many good frames, and an 11” x 3” record tab.

Figure 1 shows the blank certificate with the record tab removed.

Figure 2 shows the way the certificate might look like before removing the record tab—names, date, and rank filled in, authentication stamps placed, and, for record filing, 3-hole punched.

The following are special features of the new black belt certificate:

First, USTA’s logo of a power high kick figure and red and blue Taegeuk are prominently displayed at the upper center of the certificate to represent the school’s specialization in Korean taekwondo. The South Korean flag has the Taegeuk in the center. Taegeuk is the Korean cognate of Taiji, the Chinese concept of yin and yang.

To represent the integration or combination of Korean martial arts with American spirit, we used Old Glory red and blue, the official colors for the U.S. flag, instead of Korean red and blue.

Behind the Taegeuk and the logo, a larger light gray high kick logo appears in the background as a watermark.

The thick black lines at the certificate’s top and bottom represent the black belt. Look closely at the real certificate and you will see a fine stitching pattern design on these belts. The pattern is so fine that it cannot be reproduced using a normal photocopier. It’s a security feature to prevent forgery.

USTA’s website URL, sanantonio-martialarts.com, appears on the bottom black belt. Since a martial arts certificate is your billboard at your student’s home or office, it is always a good idea to include your domain name.

In the center of the certificate is the name of the school and the words black belt certification translated as Korean hangul.

The number of colors is kept to a minimum: only true black, Old Glory red, Old Glory blue, and gray. This keeps the certificate simple yet sophisticated and in good taste.

The entire certificate is 11×17, including a record tab at the bottom to use for maintaining your records.

A perforated line makes it easy to tear off the record tab.

All our custom certificates are printed on cardstock paper. They are thick, tested for laser or inkjet printers, and much better than the thin and flimsy certificates anyone can get in an office supply store. Your students work hard to earn their ranks. Reward and encourage them with your unique certificates, not the type that anyone can purchase and print at home on their own printer.

We are really happy with this custom certificate. It is a professional, modern style certificate that hints at the glory of both Korean and American traditions.

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.

Double Crescent Taekwondo School has a new name and a new logo: “Double Side Kick Taekwondo.” We were excited about designing its new certificate. The new certificate is similar to the old one in layout to emphasize the continuation of the school’s teachings and tradition. At the same time, the new color, blue instead of red, and the new name and logo communicate the new start.

Compared to the original certificate, we have upgraded the paper stock to a higher grade linen paper.

Below the school name is the same name written in Korean hangul. On the four corners are four Chinese characters, adopted in Korea as hanja, to represent Double Side Kick Certification.

As a security feature, we added the school’s new name on a fine print line of 2 pt. size text across the bottom of the certificate.
The watermark on the certificate reads “Taekwondo.”

We are happy to announce the creation of Stevenson’s Superior Martial Arts certificates.

The shield and fist design in the center is inspired by the school’s logo.

To be consistent with the school logo, the main colors in the certificate are black, dark gray, and gold.

The Chinese character on the right reads “Kenpo Tang Soo,” literally fist, low (or method), Tang (or China), and hand, meaning Kenpo Karate. The characters on the left read “dragon tiger spirit,” meaning the spirit of dragon and tiger. A dragon design is on both top corners and tigers are on the bottom corners, representing dragons dominating the sky and tigers dominating the earth.

This certificate has a full bleed and a traditional Chinese style border. The black border represents the black belt, or the mastery of martial arts. The gold to represents the superior, golden standard.

Please see Zhen Shou Dao Gung Fu Certificate Translation for a detailed review of the authentic Chinese translation of this certificate.

The design of this certificate is traditional in style. Ancient style Chinese characters are used on the four corners and old English script is used in the title.

Different shades of green are the main colors used for the Zhen Shou Dao Gung Fu certificate since the school’s martial arts style is praying mantis.

A large, light gray outline of the praying mantis logo, supplied by the client, is placed behind the text in the center of the certificate as a watermark.

The Chinese characters for Zhen Shou are on the right hand corners of the certificate; the characters for Winded Fist are on the left.

Beneath the top border and above the bottom border are fine text lines with the word “WILLIS,” the surname of the school owner, repeated as an authentication and security feature.

Because of our reputation for absolutely the best Chinese name translations, we have been getting more and more orders for certificate stamps orders and Certificates of Meaning. We don’t just copy and paste from a dictionary; our naming process takes almost two hours plus time for reviewing and editing. It takes so much brain power that we are limited in the number we can do per day. We have some jobs still pending from December. I apologize for the long delay but want you to know that we do only the best, even though it takes considerable time.

To reduce the load, we have increased the price for a Certificate of Meaning from $50 to $99. The price for the stamp only remains the same. We will have another price adjustment in the near future. What we really want to do is not increase the price, but devote more time to martial artists who really care about their good name and image. We will be creating packages instead of selling just “self-inking stamps.” The starting price will be higher, but the true value you will receive will also be higher. We have been providing stamps but have not been giving you the advice on how to use them and make them really work to enhance your personal brand. Now we are going to do that.

You will be given a special discount if you have purchased school or instructor stamps in the past and would like to upgrade to the package offering. What you have paid can be applied to the new package price plus you will receive an extra discount. We will send you the details via e-mail.