The color-printing industry—influenced by consumer preferences and ongoing technological advancements—continues to blossom in a digital world. A far cry from bare-bones analog technology common in years past, modern methods present endless possibilities. 

With wedding season quickly approaching, many business owners are considering what personalization technology is the most profitable and practical for creating custom products to serve the wedding market.

Rustic Falls Engraving—better known as RF Engraving—sits at the center of town in Grantsville, Utah. About 30 miles west of Salt Lake City, Grantsville is home to 12,000 people. While RF Engraving has done work across the country and internationally, the majority of their business is closer to home, including from nearby Salt Lake City.

According to the Color Science Lab at North Carolina State University, “Colors are personal psychological experiences that can be generated from various kinds of stimuli, most commonly lights of a specific spectral composition. They are taken to represent a continuum, transitioning within it in various ways. Similar to all perceptual experiences, they are subjective and depend strongly on illumination, [surroundings] and a number of other perceptual phenomena.”

When DJ and Judi Brown started their business in 2006, they were a small operation that used a foil press to personalize small items like napkins, ribbons and cards. Bit by bit, their business—which was called Getting Personal Imprinting at the time—grew as they added services, such as applying photos to porcelain, mugs and other items.

Sublimation printing has been a popular method for printing designs onto several polyester or poly-coated substrates such as ceramic, metal and fabrics. A very important part of the sublimation process is adjusting the colors to make certain that the final product looks accurate according to the logos or designs you are working with. Here is a step-by-step process to help adjust colors for consistent and accurate sublimation.

As the year progresses, awards and personalization members face no shortage of challenges: supply chain delays, inflation, labor strains and more. In this climate, making the most of the equipment you already have isn’t just helpful—it’s vital. If costs rise elsewhere, after all, greater in-house efficiency can help pick up the slack.

Sublimation has been a revolutionary development for imprinting personalized products. Dye-sublimation printing originated in the 1950s, but has only become widely used in recent years as computers became standard equipment and technology costs decreased.

Among the many products JDS offers that are perfect for personalization, cutting boards have been an amazing option for customers to engrave and personalize for their own clients. The downside of many engravable products is that they usually are made only for that purpose and not for specific printing processes to add multiple colors—and although there are many options out there for this purpose, most of them are not cheap.

I’ve often wondered how it happens. How does a person or business become known for specializing in a particular product or service? Does the idea come from within, or the consumer? Is it random, or does it occur by a more organic nature? And the most important question: Can a decent living be made through a niche profession? As always, I think the answers are many and the road to a niche is a winding one.

Where’s the beef? It’s in this very beefy project that, among other things, will detail a process for creating table tents with call numbers on them like those used by many fast-food locations.

Large franchise operations order these by the millions at a super cheap price, but smaller, local establishments often require quantities that can be profitable for laser owners, UV printers, sublimators, and other smaller-run personalization professionals.

There are so many options for gift giving using sublimation. Although it soon will be the holiday season, with the versatility and ease of sublimation, you can encourage customers to give personalized gifts for any occasion. After all, what better to bring to a housewarming party then a personalized color-themed gift box?

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.

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?”

Dye sublimation is a great process to print on a wide selection of materials: plastic, ceramic, polyester T-shirts—and our favorite substrate, metal! Although the process of sublimating on metal versus other materials is similar, there are a few key things to keep in mind to make your sublimation pop on this substrate.

All the sublimation terms you need to know—and a few you may not even have known existed.

Many customers have heard me say this about sublimation, “It takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.” Now, I cannot be 100% sure that it takes a lifetime to master because I’ve not yet reached the end of my life, thankfully. To be sure, when I do get to the end, I won’t be worrying whether that statement rings true or not. By “lifetime to master,” I simply mean that sublimation, as a digital heat transfer process, continues to evolve. As printer technologies advance, there will be lessons to be learned.