Degrees, school certificates, register extracts, baptism papers, share certificates, bonds with their coupons,
licences, membership diplomas, guarantee cards and indentures, 1860 to now — in the words, the money and the
security printing of the country and the year. Guilloche, seals and crests drawn from nothing; every institution
and person invented. Part of Chronotype · Free to use.
Licence for paid productions ·
the research behind it
The paper — what the scene needs
Year & country
The house style — dated
The words on it — all invented
This kind of paper carries no grade, so there is nothing for this to set. It comes back on a diploma or a school certificate.
The institution, the office, the people and the numbers are made up, in the
language and the formula of the country and year. Type over any of it; form fields are one per line, as
“label: value”. The ↺ beside a field takes it back to the invented one; the Checks panel flags a
real institution by name.
Inks & paper — the colours the year had
Size
The hand, the seal, the crest
Security printing — by year
Each feature switches on by itself when the year and the kind would have had
it: a fine tint from the start, the VOID pantograph from its 1978 patent, microtext in the eighties, foil around
1990, a verification code in the 2010s. The Checks panel says when one is on too early. Nothing here copies a
live security feature: the pantograph, the foil and the code only look the part.
A certificate’s own wear — drawn at size
What the year asks for — and why
For the printer
Print at 100% / actual size, margins none, on a heavy cream or white
stock — 160–250 g/m² for a diploma or a share, 90 g/m² for a register extract or a licence. A
seal looks best as a real foil sticker or a real embosser over the printed one.
Checks — what an audience could catch
Variants — the same paper, several ways
The same piece, several ways, in one pass. Everything you are not
varying is held still, so the “same” design really is the same design.
Print at 100% / actual size, margins none. Every institution, office,
company and person is invented — see the Checks panel for what dates a certificate.