When you want your brand to stand out from the crowd, nothing makes a better impression than a uniquely designed and printed piece. The tactile experience of print just can’t be replaced with anything digital. TAG’s team of experts wanted to share a soft touch feel product that’s been growing in popularity. Soft touch… it even sounds pretty cool. Here are a few options to add character and style to your next print project. Every option has a slightly different fit for production and cost reasons.
This client has used soft-touch laminate which is a true lamination process to give an instant experience to anyone who is handed a business card. It provides a unique velvet-like feel to the business card. The fact that the application is through a lamination process also adds a bit of body to the cards. It’s generally an extremely thin fractional millimeter laminate so the additional thickness is not exceptional, but it is present. This is the costliest version of a soft touch application.
Soft touch UV is similar to applying a varnish coating to a painted piece of wood. It applies over the existing print and is done through a printing or roller application. It provides a very similar soft-touch velvet feel, but at a much lower cost per sheet.
And, finally, there is now soft-touch stock. One offering is by MGX. The Luxe Soft Touch sheet is pretreated to have the soft touch velvet feel. This is a great option for larger quantity projects where the feel is desired, but a simpler version with not quite the same feel is acceptable. The cost is obviously the least of all options as the stock is slightly more expensive, but there are no additional printing or finishing requirements to achieve the result. Since this approach is printing after the stock is treated at the mill, it does not function great for designs that utilize full reverse areas of print. These areas will mitigate the feel as the ink is now on top of the soft touch treated paper. It’s still a great option, but for the savings, you do sacrifice a bit of the feel.
Customer experience has completely flipped the marketing industry on its head, as consumers begin to place higher importance on the interaction with a company. According to a study conducted by Walker, a customer experience consulting firm, customer experience will actually overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator by 2020. As one of the most impactful ways of creating a memorable experience for your consumers, the use of touch can greatly influence positive perceptions of your brand. Structural Elements does just this through the use of soft-touch laminate, by providing consumers with perceptions of high quality and professional services.
