Choosing a Design

Over the past 3 years I have compiled customer feed back which has enabled me to make changes to how we conduct business to better suite our customers. One of the top issues is how and when do you choose the design of the guard. I want to first discuss is how to come up with your design. Python Guards spends a huge amount of time coming up with designs and trying new techniques to make us one of the premier mouth guard companies in the world. The major feet to coming up with and making designs work is the amount of space allotted to work with. We have approximately ½” to ¾” of an inch to work with and we have to stay away from the top edge of the guard about 1-2mm so that the material has something to bond too. When choosing a design we generally stay between the left k9 and right k9, anything past those areas is invisible to someone looking at the guard. I look at a mouth guard much the same way as a tattoo artist looks at skin, most things are possible but some things are impossible. In order to come up with a design that your happy with you have to have clean art work, meaning if it’s a low resolution jpeg file I will have to redraw it as line art (a vector file). Programs such as paintbrush use pixels (small squares) to draw lines which leave a jagged edged line instead of a straight line like a pen or pencil would. So if it’s a jpeg, tif, or bmp extension I will more than likely have to redraw the item. Hopefully this bit o information will aid you in choosing a design that will make your mouth guard come alive. Most importantly remember the space requirements are ½” to ¾” tall and 2” – 2 ¼” long.

Now that we have discussed how to choose a design that will work in the amount of space provided we need to discuss at what point do you send the design to me. As you can see there are over 100 designed guards on the website ranging from fangs to pictures of the last supper. When you first order a Python Mouth Guard you will receive an impression kit and a set of instructions. In the set of instructions you will notice that it tells you to download the lab script from the web site under the “Lab Script” link on the left side of the page. This lab script lets me know the color of the mouth guard along with a block that tells me what you want. After you fill out all of the information and have completed the impression you will then place everything inside of a box, at this time you can place any pictures of the graphic or a picture of a guard you have seen inside the box with all of the information. If you do have the electronic image of the graphic please send it to graphics.pg@gmail.com. The sooner you send the graphic to me the less time it will take to manufacture the guard. If you have a questionable graphic that you think may be difficult send it prior to ordering the guard. I rarely run into a situation that doesn’t work out but there is always the possibility of a graphic turning out incorrectly. We have added an extra step in the process which has improved our quality control greatly. Prior to the last clear layer being placed on the mouth guard we send a picture to you for verification so that you can see what the guard looks like prior to completion. I hope this answers all of your questions pertaining to graphics and the limitations of the graphics.