Which Personalization Technique Should You Choose for Your Promotional Gifts?

Once you’re satisfied with the promotional or business gift you’ve picked for your clients or colleagues, you may think you’re all done and are ready to ship the gifts to the recipients’ addresses. But you may be forgetting one of the most important steps when designing the perfect promotional gift – personalization. You may think it’s not needed – after all, people will already be happy to receive a free product. But imagine the joy on their faces when they see their name on it or your company’s logo that they can proudly show off to the world!

For this reason, personalization seems to be one of the most important parts of choosing your gifts. But now you’re facing yet another dilemma – what type of personalization should you go for? After all, there’s so many different techniques to choose from. How are you supposed to know which of them will fulfill your goals and wishes? Well, lucky for you, we’ve compiled a list of the most popular personalization techniques (that we personally offer) and contextualized them for you within specific situations.

Screen Printing

Screen printing is one of the most popular printing techniques, as it allows us to print products of non-standard shapes and sizes. Not only that, screen printing can also be used on a variety of different materials, such as plastic, glass, metal, artificial fabrics, wood, leather, paper, foil, and more! Here’s some more benefits of using screen printing:

• Possibility of printing on larger surfaces
• Stronger coats (thicker paint application) allow for higher colour intensity
• Special effects such as reflective prints and light-emitting inks
• Automated process of direct printing on the product vouches for quick personalization

When screen printing, the ink is not “pressed”, but is applied over a finely woven porous fabric (sieve), which acts as a template. The degree of porosity of the sieves determines the resolution, and the successive application of colours creates multi-coloured motifs. With this, we ensure a higher quality of prints, and by careful preparation and selection of the best dyes, we achieve the durability of the print, which is also resistant to intensive use and washing.

This technique is the best to go for if it’s your first time personalizing products – you simply can’t go wrong with it! There’s much less possibility of misprints being made, and, as mentioned, the production time is much faster when compared to other techniques.

Pad Printing

Pad printing is intended primarily for use on smaller surfaces, where a thin layer of inks enables the printing of small motifs in extremely high resolution. Closed systems, in which the colour is hermetically sealed during printing, ensure that the first print will be exactly the same as the last in larger series. In addition, as a rarity on the Slovenian market, the printing house with which we personally cooperate also offers stamp printing with 4-colour and 6-colour machines.

With pad printing, it’s possible to print on metal, glass, leather, plastics, wood and PVC. High resolution, durability and exceptional flexibility of tampo printing to various formats ensure effective positioning of your advertising messages on an almost unlimited list of small products. Here’s some more facts you’ll want to know:

• Contrasting colours and print accuracy are comparable to offset print quality
• Exceptional resistance to UV light, suitable even for the most exposed surfaces of products
• Ability to print on three-dimensional surfaces made possible by special soft pads that adapt to the product’s shape

However, it’s important to point out that because in pad printing, the product must have a higher adhesion than a pad, it cannot be used to print on silicone or similar non-stick materials. Some very rare types of plastic require pre-treatment.

We’d recommend this technique specifically for products where your logo or message will not take up much space. The smaller the motif, the more we recommend pad printing to ensure high-contrast colours and high resolution.

Embroidery

Embroidery can either be done by hand or with the help of a high tech machine – we opt for the latter, as that way we can always ensure even embroidery on every single product. It is important to point out that there are many different types of embroidery techniques to choose from – there’s classic embroidery, step or satin embroidery, outline embroidery or outline, embossed embroidery, and 3D embroidery. Each technique has its own pros and cons, but at the end of the day it depends on your product which technique you should go for. Additionally, there’s also different embroidery options, such as direct embroidery, application, and patchwork. But not to worry – if you choose to embroider your gifts, we’ll be with you every step of the way helping you out.

Although most people only think about denim and cotton apparel when opting for the embroidery technique, the latter can be applied to other textile materials, such as leather, for example!

Embroidery is chosen much more rarely than any of the other types of personalization, which is exactly what makes it stand out! Embroidering your company’s logo or slogan on a T-shirt, hat, or even a hoodie may attract more attention than a regular screen print technique.

Engraving

Engraving is one of the techniques reserved for gifts given out at more prestigious events, such as the celebration of reaching a company’s milestone. But don’t worry – it doesn’t hurt to be extravagant on any other day of the year, so let’s just jump right into it! Let’s first differentiate the six different types of engraving (based on the material):

Metal engraving

Laser engraving of metals can be used for basic marking of logos or more complex depth engraving. With the colour of the metal (white – aluminum, silver, yellow – brass, gold, red – copper), the engraving is consequently more or less gray to black with shades of metal or of its impurities.

Wood engraving

Since laser engraving of wood is actually burning wood, as a result we get a burnt image, logo or inscription. Different types of wood produce different shades of engravings. The amount of oxygen that allows combustion is important for the colour. With a laser, it is possible to achieve wood burning to such a limited extent that the wood does not turn black when burned. Because it preserves the natural colour, the effect is most similar to gouging.

Leather engraving

Laser engraving of leather enables the production of discrete inscriptions and logos on leather items. The laser burns the upper, smooth surface of the leather. On lighter shades of leather, the laser mark is more contrasting, while on leather of darker colours, the engraving is more discreet.

Glass engraving

Glass is very friendly for making laser markings. The effect that the laser has is even more similar to sandblasting. The deformation of the glass is very small, so there is no fear that the laser-marked glass item will break.

Acrylic glass engraving

Lasers can be used to cut any shapes of nameplates, pendants, stands, etc. into plexiglass. In addition to cutting and engraving motifs, it is also possible to bend the cut shapes. Due to the quality of the cut, laser-cut products do not require additional polishing.

Stone engraving

Laser stone engraving is possible for all rock hardnesses. Stone as a natural material is not homogeneous, so it responds differently to the laser beam, which can create a variety of shades of engravings. Lasers can also be used to engrave inscriptions on semi-precious and precious stones, crystals, etc.