FOR COMPANIES
A souvenir is bought by someone who wants it. A corporate item is handed to someone who asked for nothing – and who decides within seconds whether to keep it. We design magnets that pass that test: a shape set by the logo, a raised relief you can feel under your fingers, and a print that has not worn off the fridge door a year later.
The technology itself - the relief, the UV print and how an order runs - is covered on the 3D UV magnets page. Projects for other kinds of sites are collected in our portfolio.
Every other category rests on the same assumption: somebody visited a place and wants a trace of it. In a company that assumption does not hold. The magnet reaches someone who did not ask for it, has not been anywhere, and has no reason to keep it. Everything else in the design follows from that single difference.
A souvenir starts with an advantage: the buyer reached for it. A corporate item lands in a hand at a trade fair, in a parcel or when a contract is signed, and the recipient’s first question is “keep it or bin it”. It is settled within seconds, before anyone reads the company name. So the design has to work on looks alone and on how the object sits in the hand.
On a souvenir the place is the hero and the logo moves to a band at the bottom. On a corporate magnet it is exactly the other way round: the mark takes the middle of the composition and everything around it has to strengthen it rather than cover it. That reverses the order of work – we start from the mark and only then build the scene.
A leaflet is in the bin the same day. A pen disappears into a drawer. A mug stays in the office kitchen, where only the team sees it. A magnet travels home and stays at eye level – every day, for years, including for people who have never been your customer. In this price range no other object gets that kind of exposure.
A company usually has one mark and several reasons to give it away. These four questions settle what gets made: one design for years, or a series for particular occasions.
A clean mark whose outline defines the shape of the magnet works like a seal: recognisable from a distance and unaffected when the offer changes. A logo set into a scene – a machine, a product, the plant building – tells people what you do and reaches someone who does not know you. It costs more work and needs redesigning when the business changes direction.
A permanent design travels in every parcel and to every trade fair, for years, unchanged. A design for a particular event – a fair, an anniversary, a branch opening – carries a date and works harder in its own week, but afterwards it stays in the box. Companies that do both usually start with the permanent one, because it works all year.
On a trade-fair stand the magnet has to be picked up from the counter without asking – what counts is whether it catches the eye from a step away. In a package for a key client it is examined close up, and then the finish decides, along with the object not looking like a cheap giveaway. One design serves both, but the split of the run is worth agreeing before the artwork.
A phone number and address printed permanently age along with the offer, and a change of premises writes off the whole run. A magnet can carry an NFC chip that opens a chosen page at a tap of a phone – a catalogue, a form or a business card. How the NFC function works.
While collecting quotes you will meet three technologies sold under the same name. They differ in price several times over and suit different jobs – it is worth knowing which one you are being quoted.
Artwork printed on film or acrylic, with no height at all. The cheapest option and a sensible one for very large runs in a short campaign. It looks like a sticker, because essentially it is one – there is nothing to feel in the hand.
Clear resin is poured onto a flat print and sets into a rounded dome of a fixed height. It gives gloss and a sense of depth, but there is a single height for the whole design – you cannot use it to show that a roof sits higher than a wall. It also needs a flat surface, so shapes are limited.
What we do. The relief is built layer by layer, so every element of the design has its own height and texture, and the edges are sharp rather than rounded. Colour goes on as a UV print directly onto the relief, and the shape of the magnet is set in the model – any outline, including the contour of a logo. Of the three it costs the most, and that is worth knowing in advance too.
If the magnet is to be handed out in thousands at a single event, a flat print will do. If it is to stay on a client’s fridge for years and represent a premium brand, the difference is visible and tangible from the first second. How a 3D UV magnet is made.
What separates them is whose hand the magnet reaches – and that decides whether the design carries the mark alone, a product, or a place.
If you run a company that is not on this list, let us start from one question: whose hand will this magnet reach, and in what situation. Everything that happens next in the design follows from that.