Collabative post
Today, most of our memories are online — at least the ones we thought to capture forever with a photograph. A lifetime of lovingly taken photos is just a touch away and a series of swipes to browse through. It’s an amazing convenience and an efficient and convenient way to keep our travels, achievements, and intimate memories within easy reach. And while collecting our images in the cloud and on our phones is a wonderful thing, keeping them there and nowhere else is doing those moments a disservice. Our memories should be treasures to discover, beautiful images with which we decorate our space, and a part of our lives in the world of flesh and blood.
Thankfully, the way we conveniently store all our photos in one place, in the highest possible visual fidelity, makes it easy to turn these images into objects of all sorts. On-demand custom printing can take a photo and turn it into any number of fun souvenirs to decorate a home, a room, or a car. Images once only available in cyberspace can become a daily part of one’s lived experience and physical legacy. They make great gifts, fun projects, and sentimental keepsakes. More than anything, these custom printed items can take our memories out of our phones and put them back into our lived experience.
Of course the easiest way to get photos out into the real world is just to print them and hang them on the wall. Whether blown up in a custom frame for that deluxe experience or tacked to a bulletin board for a DIY effect, this is the most traditional option for displaying photographs. It definitely conveys an old-school charm and puts a traditional emphasis on decorating with personal memories and family identity. Those looking for a project can buy photo albums to store pictures or even print photo books from scratch. The last generation to grow up with family pictures covering the walls and stuffed into albums are adults with their own children now, and may be looking to introduce those children to the way their own memories took up space in their lives.
While photos on walls and in albums are a classic choice, contemporary on-demand printing presents so many more fun and creative options for displaying our photographs. Stickers alone offer a world of unique ideas, and can be used to decorate household surfaces, beloved objects, container labels, even the bumpers of our cars. And new printing techniques allow for all sorts of cool stickers, from reusable decals one can move from object to object and never throw out, to holographic stickers that shift from one image to another. Imagine gifting your sister with a sticker that switches from her baby picture to her graduation photo as you lean left or right? The options are nearly limitless.
Photos can even be printed on specialized toys. Every member of a family, vista from a vacation, or favorite animal from a zoo trip can decorate one side of a Rubik’s cube — and these toys have variants with more or fewer sides, from the 2×2 pocket cube to the 12-sided Megaminx, so the more photos, the merrier. Novelties like kaleidoscopes are another option, and those looking for a proper retro experience can get a View Master photo viewer and print their pictures on the reels.
Even short videos can make good fodder for toys. Flipbooks can capture a brief passage of time easily, while classic toys like zoetropes (a pair of images spun between two strings) and thaumatropes (a series of images rotated in front of an eyehole) can make for a quirky Victorian throwback for the hipster or steampunk enthusiast in your life.
Perhaps the best mix of reusability, simplicity, and fun when it comes to printing one’s photographs is the custom magnet. Magnets are attractive, sturdy, infinitely reusable, and provide utility as well as aesthetic appeal. Stickers are one-use only and even decals can wrinkle and warp when reused. Toys are a lot of fun, but can be forgotten by kids and adults alike (and then according to Pixar, have pretty harrowing lives!) Magnets can have all the visual tricks of a sticker, like that cool holographic effect, but can be placed and replaced anywhere and used to display other documents.
This reusability and utility makes a magnet effectively the most substantial way to give memories as a gift. They can move from home to home, and do anything from decorate a metal table edge to hold up a child’s beloved finger-painting. In this way, magnets take our photographed memories and make them an everyday part of life that travels through life with us, a reminder of key events and precious memories, every time we open the fridge.