Affordable graphics or logos on sails

Adding your boat name, graphics or a logo on a spinnaker sail is easy and affordable.

Adding a logo or graphic on a spinnaker is ideal given the bigger area of these sails. This is a fun way to personalize your spinnaker. Logos and prints can be done on asymmetrical or symmetrical spinnakers alike, and to some extend on Cruising Code Zeros as they are made of spinnaker cloth.

While historically racing sails were the prime candidate for logos and graphics, techniques have evolved and cruisers do have the option to add logos and graphics on sails made of spinnaker cloth at a reasonable cost.

1.Techniques to apply logos and graphics on spinnaker cloth

As spinnaker cloth is very light weight, we mostly use 2 techniques to add a logo or a graphic on a spinnaker or a Cruising Code zero (also built in spinnaker cloth).

Printing on the spinnaker cloth:
This is a very popular method. We can print full color Graphics on sails using a special formulated Ink Jet printing with UV protection.
Spinnaker cloth is very light, it is best to only print your graphic or logo on one side of the sail, and the graphic / logo will show on the other side by transparency.
For best results, it is better to start from a light color sail. Printing logos or graphics on dark spinnaker cloth does not work.

Inlay:
A logo can be printed separately, then cut out and “stitched” onto the sail.
We can use this technique for logos and graphics on slighter darker cloth. The logo is printed separately on spi cloth, then cut out and carefully sewn into the sail.
The logo can be seen from both sides. The panels are carefully laid in along the same thread pattern as the original cloth so as to maintain the integrity of the sail. This process is also good for simpler logos in just a few colors.

Though Insigna is a very traditional sail graphic material, it is not recommended on spinnaker cloth because of its weight. It works mostly for letters and numbers, given the weight of this solution.
That’s why we recommend the printing or inlay techniques for applying graphics and logos on spinnaker cloth.

If you just want to add your boat name to the sail, it is pretty easy: you mostly need to select a font and decide how big you want the name to be.

2. What colors and logos work best for logos and graphics on spinnaker cloth?

Adding a logo or graphic to a spinnaker usually requires that you start from a white spinnaker or a “custom color spinnaker” option in a light color, as you need to have a single color area on which to set the logo and make the logo or graphic quite visible from afar.

Any logo / graphic will work, as long as you own the copyright to it. One of the key requirement is for you to provide a high resolution file of the graphic or logo you want on the sail (usually Adobe Illustrator format). Given the large surface of these logos once on the sail, the high resolution is key to ensure a crisp graphic.

Custom logo on Hunter 410, credit Stephen R.

3. Cost of a logo or graphic on a spinnaker

Pricing a graphic or logo on the sails is directly linked to the surface occupied on the sail. For graphic pricing, the surface to take into consideration is the smallest possible rectangle that can encompass your logo on the sail (i.e. if your logo is a circle of 2 ft diameter, the billable area will be a square of 2ft * 2 ft=4 sq ft).

For a quote:

(Please note that we cannot apply logos on existing spinnakers, or even on a new spinnaker you would never have used.)

Fill the form on our contact us page
On the form, tell us how big you want your graphics to show on your spinnaker, and where you want it; it can be a self contained logo on the sail, or it can cover the whole sail itself.
We will send you a proof drawing and the matching price, which you will need to confirm before your order. We will also give you a delivery date for your order.
Please note we will need your graphics / logo / picture in a high resolution digital format. (You need to own the logo or have the rights to use the logo).