Draw your
own stamp
A stamp is the mark your channel strikes into somebody's passport. By default it is a coloured box with four letters in it. Upload a picture and it is yours instead, on every document that carries your mark. This page is the template and the rules.
Exactly one of those two sizes. The visa page draws a mark at 168 by 112, so the larger file is that box at twice the size, the same way the passport template is the document doubled. Work at 336 unless you have a reason.
One warning the template marks for you: the small boards, the arrivals row and the wall of ports on a holder record, draw a mark nearly square and crop the sides to get there. Anything that has to read everywhere belongs in the centre square, which is the grey guide.
Two ways to use it
The switch beside the upload decides which.
- The picture is the ground. Your letters, the channel name, the date and the crossing count print over it, and the mark stays a stamp. The dashed guides above are where those land. Keep the middle of your picture quiet and it will read.
- The picture is the whole mark. Nothing prints over it. This is the one to use if you have drawn a seal that already carries its own words, and your stamp then says the same thing on every document, with no date on it.
The guides
| Zone | Box at 336 | What lands there |
|---|---|---|
| Letters | 20, 59 to 316, 111 | Your four characters, large and monospaced. Only with the lettering on. |
| Name and date | 20, 117 to 316, 165 | The channel name, then the date and the crossing count, small. Only with the lettering on. |
| Rim | the outer 8px | The border is drawn in your stamp colour over the picture. Keep detail out of it. |
| Centre square | 56, 0 to 280, 224 | What survives on the small boards, which crop the sides. |
Rules
- PNG or GIF, 336 × 224 or 168 × 112, under 2MB. Twelve pictures per channel, counted with your passport artwork.
- Transparency works. The stamp colour sits behind the picture, so a transparent middle shows your colour through.
- A GIF plays, the same way an animated passport does.
- Only the broadcaster can upload one, and only while the port is open: streamed in the last 30 days, or registered in the last 30 if you have not gone live yet.
- Nothing already struck changes. A holder who has your old mark keeps the document they have; the new one goes on the next passport that carries it.
Where it shows
Everywhere your mark does: the visa page of any passport that carries it, the holder record of everybody who has been to your channel, the wall of ports somebody has not visited yet, and the arrivals board when one of your holders turns up somewhere else. The arrivals board draws it in that board's own ink rather than your colour, which is the same rule the shape has always followed: one board wears one country's palette.