Digital Seal - Advantages and Disadvantages

Everyone knows the classic seal with name, company logo or other motifs, which is left on documents in addition to the signature. Many companies now only send documents digitally, so the old seal has had its day. But digital documents can also be given a seal. Find out here how a digital seal works.

What is a Digital Seal?

An electronic seal or digital company seal saves time and money and is easy to produce. The digital seal can be placed under documents as a supplement to the signature and thus identify you as the owner or author. Whether as a company seal, personal seal or visual highlight - the virtual seal makes documents more individual and emphasises their importance.

The digital seal is therefore suitable for all documents that are very important or that you want to clearly mark as your property. It also gives documents a personal or official touch, depending on the recipient to whom you are sending them. You can use it to digitally "seal" PDF documents, for example, but you can also insert seals into a classic Word document.

Digital Seal - Various Application Examples

Whether as a supplement to a signature or as the sole signature, with a digital seal you make your virtual documents legally secure. With it, PDFs, for example, can no longer be easily converted into editable documents, which reduces the risk of data theft or forgery. The digital seal also marks the originality and gives the document your personal signature in a professional look.

A digital seal is suitable for the following documents, for example:

• Invoices
• Defaults
• Contracts
• Transcripts
• Other important documents and agreements between you and your customers or business partners

Analogue vs. Digital Seal

A digital seal offers some advantages over the classic version, but it also has disadvantages. You can find an overview of both in the following table.

Seal Type

Classic wooden seal

Advantages

• Easy to use
• Immediately ready for use
• Versatile use
• Different sizes, motifs and colours possible

Disadvantages

• Higher purchase costs
• Seal pads have to be bought separately
• Seal pad can dry out
• Design not customisable

Digital seal

Advantages

• Free creation
• No follow-up costs
• High resolution
• Individual design
• Digitally available everywhere
• Customisable design

Disadvantages

• Can only be used digitally
• Not suitable for all formats

Create a Digital Seal - Free of Charge with Word or Acrobat

You can create a digital seal with the programme Adobe Acrobat. A design with Word is also possible. Here you will find both options for creating your own digital seal.

Create a Digital Seal: Word

Creating a digital seal in Word is relatively simple and can be done in just a few steps. You proceed as follows:

Create Document

Open your Word programme and create a new document.

Insert Word Art

Click on "Insert" to open the menu and select "Word-Art" under "Text field".

Add Seal Text

Choose any font and add your seal text in the text field.

Select Desired Shape

Next, you can transform your text field as you like and shape it as you wish. For example, the seal text can be arranged in a circle or oval to form the frame of your seal.

Insert Graphic

Now add your company logo or another graphic element.

Once your seal design is finished, save the file.

You can now use the created seal logo in your document. For contracts and other documents that you want to make forgery-proof, conversion into a PDF is recommended.

Instead of Word, you can also create your digital seal in a classic image editing programme and then integrate it into other documents as a graphic file. However, this does not work without problems with all file formats.

Create Digital Seal: PDF

Since only PDFs with a seal can be signed in a forgery-proof manner, you can embed your digital seal directly in the PDF using Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. This is how it works step by step:

Use Templates or Your Own Motifs

You can insert ready-made motifs into a PDF document, but also your own seals. You can design your own seal motif in any graphics programme.

Select and Open PDF

Open the PDF file that you want to seal and then the "Tools" tab. Click here on "Seal".

Drag the Seal Into the Document

Now you can use one of the existing seals or select "Custom Seals" and load it from your hard drive into the PDF via "Create" and "Browse".

Select Category

Now choose a category that matches the seal and give it an individual name.

Set Seal as Default

After clicking on "OK", in the future, you can use your own seal motif for each PDF by selecting it in the seal palette and placing it in the appropriate place in the document.

After saving the PDF, the seal is permanently integrated and you can continue to use the document.