Printable Certificates
Your students can easily turn any Merit achievement into a print-ready, personalized certificate. Students can print these certificates at any time after logging into their Merit account, or directly from their achievement email. Here's how they work:
Simply upload a custom certificate background image into your account. Merit will then automatically insert the student's name, and the achievement type and semester into the image, creating a unique certificate for each person.
You can create as many certificates as you'd like inside your account. To set up certificates all you will need to do is add a certificate template to your account. Here's how to set up a certificate template:
Design a Background Image
The backbone to every certificate is the background image. This is something that somebody at your school will want to design. The background image can include any graphics, text or signatures that you would like. Certificates are designed to be printed on a 8.5x11 sheet of paper. They should be landscape orientation and at least 1056 pixels wide and 816 pixels tall. Ideally it should maintain a width-to-height ratio of 1.29:1.
Larger images will be automatically downsized to 1056 x 816. Images that are wider or taller than the recommended 1.29:1 aspect ratio, may result in either blank space at the bottom of the page or some cropped imagery.
Create a Certificate Template
After you have designed a background certificate image, you'll want to create a certificate template inside your Merit account. To do this, click on Certificates option under the Settings tab inside your account. The certificates page will display all of the custom certificate templates you have created.
Click Add a Certificate to start a new template.
The first things you will add are your certificate's Category, Name and Description:
Category: Selecting a category will match your certificate up to every previously published achievement that uses the same category. For example, adding one Dean's List certificate will create printable certificates for ALL of your past Dean's List stories. The background for these certificates will be identical, but Merit will automatically insert the semester/date of the published achievement into the certificate for you.
Name: Your certificate's name is internal to your account, and will not appear anywhere on the printed document.
Description: The Description field is internal to only your students' accounts, and will not appear anywhere on the printed document.
After setting up the basics, you will configure the layout of your certificate's personalized text:
Click the Update Image button to upload the .jpg or .png image you previously designed. This will insert a sample of the image at the bottom of the page. There you will see an outlined area where you can place your custom text.
There are three personalized and customizable text fields in every certificate. In the final version of your certificate, the Student Name, Category and Semester will all be auto-filled using the information from your achievement. You can adjust the formatting of each of these fields here.
The text box will automatically display the name of one of your students, inserting that sample student into your preview image below. You can use the Short, Random, or Long buttons to cycle through other students with varying name lengths or enter a name manually. These names are just samples, and do NOT necessarily represent a student who has earned this award. The text box and First, Random and Last buttons under the Semester section operate the same way, displaying various semesters.
You can adjust the font, color and size using the tool bar below the sample information. Use the dropdown boxes to make changes to your fonts. Font options include a variety of Serif, Sans Serif, Display, Handwriting, and Monospace fonts broken down into families. You can also select a font size and color of your liking.
Note: To remove a field entirely, select the font size 0 option. This will prevent that data set from appearing in your certificate.
Lastly, you will be able to change the layout and alignment of the text in your certificate. To change the size and position of the text box, you will want to adjust the Margins settings. These are visible directly above the preview image. You can increase or reduce the margins to make the text box bigger or smaller. The smaller the number, the closer to the corresponding edge of the document, your text box will be. The text within this box can be aligned to the left, right, or center.
Clicking Create & Publish Certificates will activate the certificate you are working on. Every student who has earned an achievement that matches your selected category will have a certificate created for them retroactively. Students will not be notified that certificates are available for their previous achievements. However, when a student earns this achievement in the future, their email will include a button encouraging them to print their certificate.
Students will always have access to their previous certificates inside their accounts. They can view and print them at any time from the Certificates tab:
