What to put on an event certificate (a checklist)

A certificate has a job: prove that a specific person did a specific thing, in a way that looks credible enough to share. Miss a core element and it reads as an afterthought. Here's what to include.

The essentials

• Recipient name — prominent and correctly spelled. This is the field people screenshot.
• What they did — the event, course, or program name, with a verb ("attended", "completed").
• Date — the event date or completion date.
• Issuer — your organization name and logo, so it's clear who's vouching for it.
• A signature or seal — even a stylized one signals authority.

Worth adding for professional events

• Credit hours (CPD/CE) — if attendees claim professional development credit.
• An accreditation or reference ID — makes the certificate verifiable and audit-friendly.
• The recipient's title or role — common on corporate and conference certificates.

Design tips

Keep it readable first, decorative second. Give the recipient's name the most visual weight. Use one or two fonts — a serif for the name reads as formal, a clean sans for the supporting text. Leave generous margins; a cramped certificate looks cheap. And export at print resolution so it holds up if someone prints it.

In Certificatory, each of these is a field you position on your own template, with per-field control over font, size, color, and alignment — so the essentials land exactly where your design expects them.