Designing a medal

Your medal design is what every finisher sees, shares and keeps. You build it once, check it against your real finishers, and choose it for as many races as you like.

Make a new design

1. Go to Medal designs and select New design (or Make your first design).
2. Give it a Name for you and your team, like "2027 finisher medal". Finishers don't see it.
3. Choose an Event. Its name, distance and year fill the preview. You can still use the design for any race, or choose Not for one event.
4. Under Start from, choose A copy of one of your designs (its latest version, and the original doesn't change) or Breaktape's starting design (a round medal in Breaktape red, with the race, name, time, position and year).
5. Select Make the design.

To use it, open Race settings for each race and choose it under Medal design. To rename a design, select Rename at the top of its page, then Save name.

Shape, colours and the centre

• Shape: Round, Shield or Hexagon.
• Ribbon and Accent: choose from Tape red, Ink, Harbour blue, Fell green, Lantern gold and Mud brown.
• Centre of the medal: Distance, such as 26.2, Star or Finisher's initials.
• Artwork: upload your own picture for the centre instead. Use a PNG or JPEG, square, 800 pixels or more, up to 2 MB. Select Remove artwork to go back to the centre option above.

Fields on the medal

Each medal can show seven fields: Finisher's name, Finish time, Race name, Overall position, Category and rank, Line on the medal (or amount raised) and Year.

For each field you can:

• tick or untick it to show or hide it
• choose where it goes: Above the centre, Below the centre, Foot of the face or Around the bottom of the rim
• choose its size: Small, Medium or Large
• move it up or down with the arrows. Fields in the same place stack in this order.

Check the name fits

Judge every change against the longest name first. Under Preview with, choose a finisher. Once a race using this design has results, you'll see real finishers, such as the longest name, the race winner and someone with a single name.

The Name fit message tells you how the name sits:

• Fits on one line at full size. All good.
• Fits on one line, shrunk to a percentage of full size. Usually fine.
• Wraps to two lines. Check it still reads well at phone size. Try a smaller name size or moving fields around.

Preview every size

Switch between Medal (800 by 1120 pixels), Story (1080 by 1920), Square (1080 by 1080) and Landscape (1200 by 630, also used for link previews). Tick Actual size to see it pixel for pixel. Share images carry the medal, the name and the time.

Save it

Select Save version (with its number) when you're happy. Nothing changes for finishers until medals are made with it.

Good to know

• The preview is drawn in your browser. Use See the real medal to see exactly what finishers will get. See Checking a design and sending test medals.
• Save before you leave the page. Unsaved changes aren't kept.
• Once medals are made with a version, it's locked and saving makes a new version. See Design versions.
• Sponsors can sit on the ribbon, at the foot of the face and on share images.
• Only admins and editors can make or change designs.

Related guides

• Checking a design and sending test medals
• Design versions
• Sponsors on medals