Customised Photo Printing Exists. Why Should You Care?
In today’s digital age where a camera is ever so accessible in our pockets and snaps are so easily taken in droves, printing physical photos is an activity no longer relevant in our lives, right?
Not quite.
Although photos can be so easily sharable with just a tap of a button, the endurance of physically printed photos today shows a need for a deeper human and online connection. Maybe that’s why Millennials (with the start of Neoprints) and the generations who follow are so obsessed with Polaroids.
But if Polaroids and our phones share the same picture, why are printed photos still so significant?
I’ve got the answers.
1. Last Minute Gift Runs are Hardly a Thing Now
(unless you’re desperate.)
Brick and mortar gift stores are losing its luster. Young people know better that a personalized gift brings so much more to the experience than a plain, expensive one. Gone are the days where a quick run to purchase a “World’s Best Dad” cup or a praying baby angel paperweight will suffice for a gift during Father’s Day. Wouldn’t a custom printed cup of a family photo be better?
A personalized gift brings joy – It shows you care; it shows you remember. That is why younger people are spending more of their time and effort looking for custom acrylic or wooden photo prints.
My experience with the power of a memorable personal gift happened a few years ago. Mother’s Day was around the corner and my spouse and I wanted to celebrate our mothers by giving something special. We scoured the internet for things: Novel greetings cards, cups, household appliances, you name it. In the end, we settled with a personalized, simple photo frame collaged with hand-cut printed photos taken by our phones of all the times we’ve spent as a family.
It was one of the greatest gifts they’ve received - Till today, the frames hang proud in the living rooms of their respective homes. Sometimes, you’ll hear of how much our moms take pride and appreciate the gift.
The Moments Lab offers online photo printing services where you can find and create similar experiences. One of our flagship products is the custom printed wooden photo blocks. By simply uploading a desired photo to be printed on the products page of a wooden shape you like, you can expect the perfect Mother’s Day or Father’s Day gift delivered to you by the next 10 days.
Now, you don’t have to worry about getting cheesy gifts for you loved ones.
Then again, with the busy lives we live, it’s no surprise that we tend to forget birthdays or anniversaries once in a while. That is where there will always be a place for last-minute brick and mortar premier gift stores *Looks at Precious Thoughts*.
2. Polaroids are Expensive and impermanent. We Need Something New
This may sound ironic in an article about photo printing, but it’s true. Ask any post-Millennial individual and they will complain how precious a single Polaroid can be. Polaroids come in cartridges, and a cartridge of 10 sheets can easily cost more or less 10 dollars.
That’s close to a dollar a sheet! It’s almost like burning through cigarettes packs.
There is little to no incentive for Polaroids: They fade in time, and even with the flash of the camera on, it hardly functions well in darkly lit rooms. And sometimes, the anticipation to see how your photo has turn out only to find that it looks bad as the picture fades in is a terribly agonizing process – It becomes a dollar that no one wants.
We need something new; conventional photos (Polaroids included) are both expensive and impermanent.
That’s why acrylic photo blocks are great alternatives. They are more robust compared to our wooden alternatives. Your favourite uploaded image will undergo UV printing using durable ink, resulting in a high-quality water and fade-resistant finish.
Did we mention that you can expose instax to damage under sunlight or water?
Also, the acrylic gives a vibrant dynamic to your favourite selected photo with a 3D feel to it, and with its transparent, clear characteristics, it’s the perfect frame for any aesthetic.
So, worry not about burning through countless Polaroid cartridges or spend more in getting a camera. Use a phone and get that high-definition photo printed with permanence using custom acrylic photo printing. Quality over quantity, after all.
3. Consuming Media is Integral to Our Living
Music players are old school – Music streaming services is now a thing integral to our lives. It is the 80s and 90s kids that will remember and appreciate the pain (and joy) of lugging our library of CDs to play through a CD player before it evolved to the times where songs are uploaded into MP3 players through Limewire, all in a giant 300-song playlist.
Spotify is integral to much of our living. But our journey of melodies don’t have to stop there in today’s day and age. Our visual and aural journeys can come together to help us relive our memories in great ways.
To help with that, people of today are looking to create personal, physical, mostly acrylic Spotify album covers.
The Moments Lab provides photo printing on Acrylic Spotify tracks too. Our Acrylic Music Tracks are beautiful, all in one solutions to showcase your favourite visual memories tagged with the signature song you’d associate that memory with.
It’s a genius way for storytelling. Once you’ve received your favourite acrylic music album, it makes the storytelling of your favourite memory easier – Like an audio picture book that you can place anywhere at home or in your office. All you need to do is scan the Spotify code through Spotify.
Customised Photo Printing is here to stay, and you should care because it helps you tell your story and connect with those you love.
Yes, the phone shutter button is king in today’s digital era. But that doesn’t mean human connections will be absent when we’re connected digitally.
When gifts are personal, love abounds.
So, snap away – Tell us your story: Share with us your #wandurlust, feed your phone and feast our eyes with your dinner, show us what your favourite #ootd is, store these memories in your phone.
And when you find the perfect shot you want to immortalize, visit The Moments Lab. They will be more than willing to help you relate, relive and establish a closer connection to your memories through their physical photo blocks and memories track in a stale, indifferent digital age.