PaperSpecsGallery.com Presents: Dream of Paris Hand Soap (Video)

It’s a dirty business selling hand soap; competition is fierce. Rather than trying to woo you purely with exotic ingredients, Home and Body Co.’s soaps do double-duty as items of bathroom décor. That clear container of Dial might do the trick, after all, but wouldn’t you rather gaze at a bottle elegantly decorated with a Parisian motif instead? Home and Body thought so and, with the help of Digital Label Solutions, ooh-la-la’d four different hand soaps into their Dream of Paris Collection.

Explains Digital Label Solutions’ Sandy Petersen, “The label is two sided: it has a front and a back. The design is almost identical on both sides, except for a change in copy. When applied to a clear bottle with a clear liquid inside, either side can be viewed depending on the angle of the bottle. The back side is viewed looking ‘through’ the bottle and the soap.”

We could talk at length about how gorgeously they rendered that lacework illustration around the edges – you’d swear the bottle had been slipped into a type of lacey tea cozy. And yes, the postmark and that sepia-toned Eiffel Tower image are well realized here, too, no question.

But the aspect of this label we keep coming back to is this: Digital Label Solutions received the final design proof late on a Friday…and delivered 3,000 labels of the SKU pictured here the following Tuesday! (That’s worth an additional “!,” surely.)

If you haven’t guessed already, these labels were printed digitally on an HP Indigo 6000 press. More specifically, on Wausau Coated 2 mil. clear polypropylene with a 1.2 mil clear polyester liner, according to Sandy. “It was then laminated with 60 lb. semi-gloss paper to provide a white background behind the graphic, and opacity.” Finally, the label was die cut and further laminated with a 1.0 mil clear BOPP laminate.

The finished product is an elegant marriage of 21st century digital technology and design that harkens back to a gentler time. Its nostalgic presentation also reminds us why, whether we’re from Cleveland or Calgary or Kuala Lumpur, Paris has always been, and remains, the capital of our dreams.