3D magnets for zoos, oceanariums and botanical gardens

3D magnet with relief — a tourist souvenir for an oceanarium, shark motif in a custom design

3D Tourist Magnets + UV

Międzyzdroje Oceanarium

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Close-up of a 3D magnet for Oceanarium Międzyzdroje – multi-level relief with a shark, a ray and a reef

An underwater scene on a flat magnet

An underwater motif has one catch: everything happens in the same space, so it easily turns into a flat patch of blue.

We built the design in planes – the shark in front, the ray and the shoal set back, the reef as background. That difference in depth makes the scene readable from a distance.

3D magnet with a shark and a ray for Oceanarium Międzyzdroje, standing on a counter in front of an aquarium

Colour that survives seaside conditions

Before a souvenir reaches the fridge, it spends weeks on display by the entrance, often in full sun.

We apply the UV print directly onto the relief rather than onto foil – the colours do not fade and do not rub off.

A second design with an NFC chip

At the oceanarium’s request we prepared a second design with an NFC chip built into the magnet.

The chip points to the Oceanarium Międzyzdroje profile on Instagram – bringing the magnet close to a phone opens it straight away.

3D magnet for a botanical garden and mini zoo — animal figures as a gift shop souvenir

Tourist Souvenirs & 3D Magnets

Zielona Góra Botanical Garden

Fridge magnet with a llama, a lemur, a meerkat and goats, lettered Ogród Botaniczny Zielona Góra and Mini Zoo

Animals instead of a general view

A botanical garden is hard to show on a single magnet – greenery without a focal point looks the same in every city.

So instead of a panorama, the design is built around the mini zoo residents: a llama and meerkats in the foreground, with plants as the backdrop. The souvenir then speaks about a specific place rather than greenery in general.

Close-up of a 3D magnet – a meerkat by a pond with water lilies and a waterfall, lettered Ogród Botaniczny Zielona Góra

Fur and leaves in one relief

Fur and leaves call for completely different textures.

The animals received a denser, finer relief, the plants wider and flatter surfaces, and the garden’s name sits on a raised bar so it stays readable even at an angle. This layering of textures is what separates a 3D magnet from a print on a tile.

Series of 3D UV magnets for a botanical garden — four animal designs as a souvenir for visitors

Zielona Góra Botanical Garden – series

Three fridge magnets for Ogród Botaniczny Zielona Góra – a meerkat, a group of animals and a lemur with a sign

Why a series sells differently

A single magnet is one purchase decision.

A series adds a second: because the designs form a set, some visitors take two or three – one for themselves, one for someone else. It is the simplest way to raise basket value in a gift shop without raising the unit price.

3D souvenir magnet with UV print for a mini zoo — forest animals as a gadget for visitors

Tourist Souvenirs & 3D Magnets

Górecznik Park (Mini Zoo)

Close-up of a 3D magnet – a capybara, an ostrich, a goat and dinosaurs around the Górecznik Mini Zoo sign

A souvenir a child picks out

In a family mini zoo, it is usually the child, not the adult, who decides what gets bought in the shop.

The design is therefore built around recognisable animals with clear outlines and readable silhouettes – no tiny details a child would miss, and no dark patches where shapes disappear.

Fridge magnet with the Górecznik Mini Zoo forest scene – a capybara, a girl with a basket and signposts

A forest scene instead of a single animal

Instead of a single figure, the design shows a slice of forest scenery with several animals and a wooden board bearing the complex’s name.

Such a composition gives more reasons to pick the magnet up and rewards a longer look – which in a souvenir shop translates directly into a purchase decision.

3D UV magnet with gilded relief for a palm house — the glasshouse at night as a city souvenir

3D Tourist Magnets + UV

Zielona Góra Palm House

3D magnet with a night view of the palm house, set in front of the real Palmiarnia building in Zielona Góra

A glasshouse shown at night

By day, a palm house is mostly glass and greenery – a motif that turns grey on a magnet.

So we moved the scene into the night: the lit structure stands out against a deep blue sky, while the moon and stars give the eye points to settle on. The same building, completely different readability.

Close-up of a Palmiarnia Zielona Góra souvenir magnet – gilded outline, steps and palm leaves in relief

Gilding as part of the design structure

The gold finish is not decoration here – it guides the composition.

The outline, the steps, the palm leaves and the lettering are gilded, that is, the elements meant to lead the eye. A dark magnet then does not get lost on the shelf, and the detail stays visible even in the dim light of a shop.

3D magnet series for a mini zoo

Mini Zoo Żużela

Eight animals, one design each

Serval, camel, alpaca, donkey, goat, meerkat, sheep and lemur.

The name alone does not say who lives at the facility, while a full set of magnets says it at once – before anyone reads the board at the entrance. A visitor reaches for the animal they stood in front of the longest, so the choice makes itself.

Mini Zoo Żużela 3D magnet with a ring-tailed lemur – a raised wooden board with the facility name and a stilt house

The name is part of the relief

The name is not printed flat along the bottom edge.

It sits on a wooden board modelled together with the rest of the design: the planks have a grain, the letters stand above them and cast a shadow, and the whole board belongs to the scene instead of covering it. A year later on a fridge it is still clear where the souvenir came from.

Mini Zoo Żużela fridge magnet with a serval on a wooden post, the enclosure and its tower behind

The tower from the enclosure is in the design

The wooden tower in the enclosure is modelled into the design too, behind the serval.

A visitor holds the very thing they were looking at a moment earlier, not a generic animal illustration that could be bought anywhere else. A design like that is hard to copy and hard to sell elsewhere, so the souvenir stays tied to one address.

Close-up of a 3D magnet relief – the alpaca’s fleece strand by strand and grained barn planks beside the gold outline

A fleece built strand by strand

The alpaca’s fleece is not painted onto a flat background.

Every strand has a relief of its own, as do the planks and shingles of the barn behind the animal – the modelling goes down to a single hair. That is why the design survives a photograph taken from a few centimetres away, so the same shots work on the shop shelf, on social media and on the website.

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.

How a nature attraction differs from other clients

A souvenir from a castle, a town hall or an arena is built around a building - a shape that looks the same all year and that everyone recognises from a photograph. A site with living nature has no such anchor, and that changes almost everything in the work on a design.

The hero is a living creature, not a building

A visitor leaves a botanical garden with the image of one particular plant or animal, not of the entrance gate. The same garden seen from above looks much like a garden in any other city. That is why our first question is not what the site looks like, but what visitors remember from it. The answer shapes the design more than anything else.

The gift shop works to the rhythm of the season

A nature attraction has a sharp peak and a long decline: spring school trips, the summer holidays, weekends with good weather. A shop stocked in the middle of the peak is stocked too late, and a design ordered after the season waits until the following spring for its first sale. This rhythm affects not only when you order, but also how many designs are worth having at once - the quiet season is the best moment to prepare something new, not to sell more.

Several people decide on the design

In practice we rarely talk to one person. The shop manager knows what sells and what is missing from the shelf. The promotion team makes sure the souvenir matches the site identity. The education team checks whether the species is shown correctly - in a nature attraction this matters, because a souvenir with a wrongly drawn animal comes back to them as questions from visitors. Management approves the whole. A design that passes this path without corrections usually answered all four needs from the first sketch.

The choices you make before ordering

A few decisions come before the first sketch. None has a single right answer - they depend on what your shop looks like and who walks into it.

One design or a series

One design is simpler to handle: one place on the shelf, one stock level, one decision when reordering. A series takes more attention but changes how people buy. The sensible line runs where a site has several clear heroes - if visitors name three or four species, a series has something to stand on. If the site is associated with one thing, a single well-made design works better. How that looks in practice we show with the series of four designs for the Botanical Garden.

A recognisable species or a view of the whole site

A general view has an advantage: it holds the name of the site and says at once where the souvenir comes from. It also has a drawback - the more it holds, the less of it is visible on a surface the size of a palm. A species works the other way round: it reads from a distance, but on its own it does not say where it was seen. The middle ground works best, with the hero in the foreground and the name of the site as part of the composition rather than a caption added at the bottom.

A year-round or an occasional design

A year-round design works across many seasons and pays for itself best. An occasional one - an anniversary, the opening of a new pavilion, the arrival of a new animal - sells intensively and briefly, and then becomes a curiosity for people who collect souvenirs. Sites that do both usually keep a permanent series as the base and add a single design for the event.

The site mascot as a motif

If a site has its own mascot, it is tempting to make it the hero of the magnet. It is worth checking first whether the mascot is recognisable outside the site. Some live only on promotional materials and mean nothing specific to a visitor - a real animal then works better, and the mascot returns as the second design in a series.

What repeats across this category

Successive projects for zoos, gardens and oceanariums show things that a single commission does not reveal.

First, in none of them did the name or logo of the site become the hero of the design. The name is on every magnet and is legible in every case, but it always enters as part of the composition - a beam, a sign, an outline - never as the main subject.

Second, almost all of them chose a motif that a visitor could have seen the same day: a particular animal or a particular corner of the grounds, not a symbol alluding to the theme.

Third, the same question about legibility from a distance came back every time. A magnet lies on a shelf or hangs on a stand and has about a second to catch the eye. That question always proved more important than the number of details that can be fitted in.

Types of places we design magnets for

Each of these has a different shop, a different rhythm of the year and a different hero on the souvenir.

Zoos and mini zoos The most recognisable heroes, so a series is easiest to justify. Visitors usually pick the animal they stood in front of longest.

Oceanariums and aquariums An underwater motif can be uniform in colour, so the design has to build depth with something other than hue.

Botanical gardens and arboreta Greenery without an anchor looks similar everywhere. The souvenir needs something specific: a species, a structure in the garden or an animal.

Palm houses and glasshouses Here the building is as much the hero as the plants, and glass calls for a different approach to light in the design.

Landscape parks and nature trails No single point of sale, but a clear leading motif - a protected species or a characteristic landscape.

If you run a place that is not on this list and your visitors come to you for contact with nature, tell us what they photograph most often. Every design starts from that one piece of information.

Questions about magnets for zoos, oceanariums and gardens

Can the magnet show a particular animal from our garden?

Yes, and that is usually what we do - the design should remind visitors of what they saw that same day, not a generic symbol. We agree the motif at the start, and before production you receive a 3D visualisation to approve. That is the moment when the education team can check whether the species is shown correctly.

How many designs should a series have?

As many as your place has clear heroes. If visitors name three or four species, a series has something to stand on - that is how the four designs for the Botanical Garden came about. If the place is associated with one thing, a single well-made design works better. The minimum order applies separately to each design in a series.

When is the best time to order souvenirs for the season?

Outside the peak. A point of sale stocked in the middle of the season is stocked too late, and a design ordered after the season waits for its first sale until the following spring. The quiet season is the best moment to prepare a new design - there is time for visualisations and corrections without deadline pressure.

Will the print survive sunlight in a display window?

We apply the colours with UV printing directly onto the relief rather than onto foil, so they do not fade in the sun and do not rub off. We describe the whole technology on the 3D UV magnets page.

Contact & B2B details