Achieving Instant Personalization of Products

By: Amanda Ross | April 5, 2022 | 5 Min Read

Personalizing invitations, cards, or other products in real-time shouldn’t be difficult.

So, why is it still so hard?

While our current global situation continues on, life does, too. Our families and friends are still celebrating milestones, getting married, or experiencing the joy of welcoming their first child into their lives.

As a designer, I have helped many of my friends with designing their invitations for these events or suggesting template items that reflect their tastes and aesthetics.

Every time, without fail, I hear the same questions:

• “Why can’t I see my text on this?”
• “I want to be able to see the shimmer of the gold...”
• “Can you mockup what this could look like so I can see it?”

Allowing customers to instantly personalize items and see their name on a product in real-time is one of the most obvious things I think the e-commerce world should embrace.

Maybe they can’t afford the time to implement it, don’t possess the skills, or don’t have enough people to optimize the workflow.

But it’s the 21st century, and technology has far surpassed anything I think we’ve imagined thus far. And yet, e-commerce websites are still pretty dated when it comes to personalization.

There are some websites that offer a preview feature with personalization in real-time; however, those websites may not be the most cost-effective, or they fail to offer the type of invitation or card that a customer is looking for.

Expecting One Thing, Receiving Another

As a consumer, we’ve all had that panic moment when your product arrives and you find that a name was misspelled or a color turned out completely different than intended.

Now you need to order a reprint; which requires you to spend more money and more time, leading to frustration and anger that could have been avoided if you simply had the chance to see it before it went to print. Then you’re left hoping that the reprint arrives on time.

When someone sees something with their name or their special event on it, they are more likely to purchase the product. Customers want to be sure that their products will arrive as they expect.

All That Glitters

One of the nicest features of printing is that we have the ability to select from so many options. Print houses can create specialty finishes like spot gloss, foil, and letterpress options. Likewise, with their die-cutting abilities, they are able to cut out any shape imaginable including unique paper edging or punching out a graphic. Yet more often than not, you are unable preview these features with your personalized information. This leaves you in the dark about how your fancy new business cards are going to truly look with your specialty selections.

It is difficult to render an image quickly and accurately with those types of visual enhancements, but as I said before, technology has come a long way since we used woodblock type.

Only Limited By Your Imagination

There are a gratuitous amount of solutions that are available to choose from that offer image resizing capabilities, the option to add your own photo, and maybe even your own text. However, there’s no one that offers solutions for every single instance that a designer encounters.

LiquiFire® OS provides a vast scope of customization, personalization, and colorization features that you won’t find with any other imaging software. The beauty of LiquiFire OS is that I am only limited by what my imagination can come up with. As a designer who works within the world of dynamic imaging, let me highlight just some of the features that I find to be valuable.

Text, Text, and More Text

It is important to me as a designer to make sure that my text is not only spelled correctly, but that I have the ability to add different characters. I need advanced typography, such as accented glyphs and occasionally foreign languages that do not use roman glyphs.

Not only can I create text in any language I want, I have the ability to do fun things, including:

• Dynamically wrapping text around any object
• Making text look embossed or engraved
• Adding any type of texture like glitter, shimmer paper, fabrics, textures, patterns, etc.
• Showing embroidered text in a realistic way

Add Patterns, Textures, Fabrics, and More to Any Surface

I love this feature. It’s probably the most fun and rewarding part of using LiquiFire OS. With LiquiFire Image Chains™, I can add anything I want to any surface. If a client wants marble texture invitations, but then changes their mind to a recyclable craft paper instead, it’s no hassle at all to update the preview image.

The best part is that it doesn’t have to be a flat picture; I can wrap images around objects including water bottles, furniture, clothing—literally anything. That includes 3D assets, as well.

Changes in Real-Time

One of the best things I’ve come to admire about dynamic imaging is the instant gratification I get by using it. If I mess up typing a word—which we have all done—changes can happen instantly thanks to the dynamic nature. Whereas a traditional digital designer, I would have to open an editing program, change the text, maybe warp it again, resize the final image, export and save it, then resend it to the client.

I’m just tired even writing those steps. 

With LiquiFire OS, my workflow is optimized. I save time by removing more than half of the traditional steps with dynamic imaging and save time for both my client and myself.

It Just Works

LiquiFire OS has so many features and capabilities, it is difficult not to keep going and tell you all of the features. (We would be here a long time.)

But in my experience of working with LiquiFire OS and understanding the functionality of LiquiFire Image Chains, I have come to not only admire, but to become a champion that shouts on the rooftops wondering why more people aren’t already using this. Designers have to adapt, modify, and sometimes learn more and more programs to help keep them current in today’s markets.

LiquiFire OS offers solutions for everyone, in every industry, and every craft. My goal is to help share the values I have found helpful for designers so that you may find some benefits, too.