When thinking about cities like Las Vegas, New York, and Tokyo, images of stunning, eye-catching signage often spring to mind. More and more we are seeing brightly lit displays being used to create unforgettable messages for advertising as well as simpleambient appeal for restaurants, galleries, and even modern home décor.

I tried out this impressive dye-sub trend with gorgeous results. Luckily, I took photos along the way to ensure you could try it, too! With this step-by-step guide to dye sublimation, all you need is your imagination.

When the Awards and Personalization Association heard about a new sublimation product that debuted in October, we wanted to know more. JDS Industries is the distributor for SubTHAT!, so we spoke with Sublimation Specialist Colin VanLint to find out more about the new product—and to see how the process works.

I’ve been creating ADA-compliant signage since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. Compliance requirements have evolved, but one thing stays the same: few markets available to personalization retailers are as expansive as that for ADA-compliant signage.

In the first half of this article in the October issue of Insights, I explained that customers want to be able to give you the words or art they need and expect you to “make it look cool.”

Do you have a laser and sublimation equipment? With inspiration and creativity, there is no limit to what you can create using this substrate. The question to ask is whether you can sell the product you’re creating. I’ll get to that. Here are five ideas.

Those of you that are order-takers for your business have probably heard this from your customers, “If I give you our logo and the verbiage, can you put it on a plaque and make it look cool?”

Personalized flasks are a fun and unique gift to give to a bride, groom, groomsmen, best man, maid of honor, bridesmaids, or matron of honor. In fact my sister recently provided me with plain metal flasks to sandcarve with a personalize message for her own wedding party.

Sandcarving is a quick, clean, and simple process that will diversify any business. Sandcarving not only allows for deep etching capabilities with sharp, clean lines, but it also offers techniques unique to sandcarving that will increase the value of any project. These techniques include halftone, or photographic etching, frosting capabilities, complex curves, and the popular multistage carving capability!

JDS Industries provides a CorelDRAW/Photo-Paint tutorial on how to fix poor-quality artwork for a personalized, laser-engraved product. See how a blurry, faded, handwritten recipe was altered in CorelDRAW and Photo-Paint before being lasered onto a bamboo cutting board to create a sentimental personalized gift.