Sea of special materials

The sign and allied industry’s appetite for flexible materials, principally those with pressure-sensitive adhesives on the back of them, began in earnest back in the 1980s when the advent of the world’s earliest practical cutting plotters kicked up demand. Then inkjet printers came along. Despite grave prognostications then being made for the health of the soaring self-adhesive materials industry, the appetite for its products has not just sustained itself, demand is now even higher.

Your mileage may vary, but, were you to look at sales of self-adhesive materials to the industry overall, you would discover that white materials dominate. That should not be a surprise now that printers dominate production too. Black and clear materials have been in the charts forever and very popular colours, red and blue of some blush or other for example, sit in solid positions supporting the leaders.

By the time your enquiry considers even vaguely off-piste vinyl colours, green for example, the overall volume contribution you would note from such B-listers would not make it anywhere near double-digit percentages. If your thoughts do not at this point turn charitably to your material supplier who has his money tied up maintaining ranges of eighty or so colours, they should. Keeping the industry supplied with the materials it needs, when it needs them, and at prices the industry is happy to pay, is a complex and very costly business.

The long foretold day when a typical sign-maker would have in his workshop an inkjet printer, and a roll or two of anonymous looking white material has never arrived and it never will. Far from simplifying demand, the digital revolution has greatly complicated it. There is not much you can say about white materials you would think, but colour aside, there is lots going on. We now prize different materials for the way they drape or hang, for their textures or for their ability to block out what is underneath.

Coloured vinyl still sells very strongly. Then there is a whole breed of materials, neither coloured nor ‘digital’ that does not sit in the swatch waiting in turn or playing quietly with the other. Most suppliers and manufacturers refer to these materials as ‘specialities’.

Enter specialities

Speciality materials are absolute gems. Take the time to get to know a few and it is like picking up stones and getting a great surprise when washing them under the tap and some turn out to be diamonds. If yours is a diet consisting mostly of white printables and you are not interested in getting your greens to double digits, ease speciality materials into your world anyway. Why? Because your business will use them to produce work that is bordering on exclusive. You will add enormous value to routine production. You will make more money. I repeat. You will make more money.

What is out there waiting for you in the speciality materials ranges? One range of speciality materials sells in such volumes, it subverts one of the basic qualifications for being considered a speciality in the first place, that range is known to many as the Etches or etch effect film. Etches are used on windows. Imaginative companies use them in far wider application than that though. As a condiment, they can turn a routine job into something that looks like a million dollars and which costs a tiny fraction of that to produce.



So, what is an etch effect film and how is it made? Ian Simister, Metamark’s sales director, says: “Etch effect films are among our best-selling specialities. We start with something that, were we to put it through a conventional production process, would actually come out looking almost like a clear film. Instead though, we emboss it.


“The emboss we put into the film is almost imperceptible in terms of detail, but overall, it has the effect of blocking the view through the clear film, but doesn’t block the light it transmits. Our customers cut this film into lettering, logos and patterns and the like and stick it on windows and other transparent panels. Those panels then look like they’ve been etched.”



Indeed they do. Using a few metres of Metamark’s etch effect film to achieve that attractive, freshly etched effect is arguably a little easier than going the traditional route. Traditionally, you would have had to sandblast glass through a stencil or have used a none-too-friendly chemical paste to achieve the etched look. Sticking on a bit of cut and applied film yields a remarkably attractive facsimile though. Customers love it. You love it too. However, etch films’ speciality-led repertoire is not over.

Simister says: “The great thing about speciality films like The Etches is they seem to encourage creative applications. We designed our Etch Effect films to be used on windows. Despite that, we’ve seen them used for application to coloured vinyl. Being clear to start with, the underlying colour shows through, but the gloss level of the vinyl is modified. Matt detail on gloss colour, it’s priceless.”



The popularity of etch effect films has spurred manufacturers into developing specialities within the speciality ranges themselves. Among the first to do this was 3M. 3M put a hint of colour, minty green and pale pink for example, into its etch films and later tiny metallic inclusions to give the product a bit of a sparkly look when applied. Customers, as Simister has identified, have done their own background innovation.

Nobody knows for sure but someone out there can lay claim to having been first to print etch effect films. In Metamark’s case, a support call came from someone who’d tried it and wanted to know if it was OK to use. “We immediately supported the idea,” says Simister, adding: “Our Etch films share quite a bit of DNA with our digital flagship MD5. They both print brilliantly.”



Printing etch effect films transforms the effect that is possible. The printed details register as a mere suggestion of itself. It adds ambience to interiors and money to the value of what might otherwise be run-of-the-mill window graphics. If you have a solvent or latex printer, load up an etch effect film, and invest a few pounds printing a little.

That is as much training as is required. Look at your output. Apply it to a window. Could you sell it? Do not try too hard, just show it to people. It is very seductive.

Commercial challenge

You do not have to walk away from windows quite yet to continue the immersion in the value of speciality materials. Lots of them want to find a home on glass and the results, when they do, can be nothing less than stunning. That is the good news. Here comes the bad.

If you take all the speciality materials available, and the hardware out there that can work with those materials, and then add to that the talents and creative potential of the sign and display industry, practically anything is possible. Works of great originality. Head turning interpretations of the familiar. Never before seen applications when one otherworldly material meets another with a sign-maker in the middle. The buying side of the equation though, that is the customer, does not have a clue what you are capable of doing.

A huge prize awaits those of you who put some horsepower behind an effort to get the message out to your market and demonstrate just what you are capable of doing with all this material goodness and hardware cleverness. Knock on your material suppliers’ doors and ask the question ‘what can you do to help me sell?’

Turning back to the practically unbounded expanse of glass that is available to decorate out there, you should introduce yourself to a few other clever speciality materials that deserve your attention; polishes, for example. Polishes impart a metal-like effect to the glazed surfaces to which they are applied.

Polishes evoke an effect that is suggestive of the high-art of what some call gilding, and what you might call gold-leaf. It is enough of a suggestion to make the effect worthwhile and the result you can achieve is both marketable and very valuable. Lots of specialist metallic films are available from the supplier fraternity and many of these are constructed as a laminate with a supporting substrate of PVC. As a consequence, they are metallic on the first surface and deliver a great effect, but you cannot apply them behind glass.

O Factoid: Doming adds huge value to pieces of printed work. An acrylic transparent resin is applied using a dispensing gun and when dried it gives a hardwearing clear domed finish to any application. It protects the graphic and it adds interest. O

Metamark offers double-sided polish films that work inside glass and outside too. Unlike real leaf, polish films are cut, weeded, and applied. They are on the thin side so you will want your best weeding head on the day you decide to use them. The effect though makes the delicate nature of the work worth the effort.

You can use polishes, and more commonly available metallic films, as the main event in a sensitively designed installation, or you can use them in moderation as an accent to bring a focus on something made from mainstream cut and applied or printed materials. That little bit of accenting makes a big point for polishes, and for speciality films in general—it adds money to the perceived value of a job, and makes your company more attractive to customers looking for something beyond graphics as usual.

A point also made by double-sided polished films is that windows have two sides. At least one of those sides is, usually, there to afford those behind a window sight through to the view beyond. Obscuring that view effectively legislates against the use of a lot of very attractive glass for displaying graphics. Thankfully, invention has given the industry see-through graphics. The source of the invention itself, and of a deep understanding of the medium, is Contra Vision.

Contra Vision is a product. It is also a company based in Manchester in the UK and in Atlanta in the USA. The company’s commercial director, Rob Stone, knows a bit about speciality materials having served for years as a product manager at Spandex, and before that having specified colour blushes and sparkly bits in etch films when he was at 3M.



Stone’s working day now is concerned with delivering reliable products that, when printed and applied by the global sign and graphics industry, are seen and seen through the world over. For those who have never handled, seen, or seen through a Contra Vision product, here is how the idea works.

The material that ultimately finishes up on the window or transparent panel is made from a laminate that comprises a black and a white layer. That laminate has an adhesive on the black side and the whole assembly has small perforations through it. When applied, anyone stood on the black side of the material sees straight through it to the view beyond, those on the other side see the image or design printed on the material.

Contra Vision’s products have found applications in retail, security, and they are even used for improving privacy in domestic dwellings. Most people first encounter see-through graphics on vehicles though. They are used for livery continuations that can take design elements gracefully onto glazed surfaces or for advertising.

There is commercial opportunity cut from among speciality materials’ best that is waiting for sign and graphics manufacturers to exploit in the field of see-through graphics. Think of it as a speciality within a speciality. The speciality material that unlocks it for you is called Contra Vision Backlite.

Stone explains: “Contra Vision Backlite does something other see-through graphic materials don’t—it remains visible around the clock. Conventional see-through graphics just fade away when exterior light levels fall but Contra Vision Backlite carries on doing its job.”


That is a big idea. Imagine a speciality film that you can apply to windows, and which does a job you would think of as being the exclusive province of an illuminated sign. You can see through it from the inside too—bonus.

Stone continues: “Our Contra Vision Backlite material is best printed on solvent or latex hardware because it benefits from ink that has a degree of transparency. No special measures are needed when printing it. It applies like regular perforated material too.”

Contra Vision Backlite differs in an obvious sense from more conventional materials of the see-through variety in having no black layer. Lighting, being the cooperative thing it is though, ensures that those on the inside of a properly applied Contra Vision Backlite graphic see through a faint reversed image or no image at all, to the view beyond.

Lighting plays a further role. Contra Vision Backlite works best when interior lighting that is strongly directional can in turn be directed onto the back of the applied graphic. If the interior is dominated by darker hues, the results seen from the outside when the sun has gone down are spectacular.

Here is a ready and waiting application opportunity for this speciality material that you could exploit. Installing Contra Vision Backlite into the upper reaches of car showrooms’ windows effectively extends the reach of the showroom’s PoS to the extent the showroom can be seen, from its competitors’ forecourts for example.

Configurable lighting is everywhere in such showrooms. You can deliver hard-selling banner-like window graphics that are visible around the clock to car retailers. Give it a go. Contra Vision Backlite is distributed in the UK by William Smith and Contra Vision itself can answer questions too.

Time to reflect

Venturing away from windows, the next port of call for speciality material could be anywhere, but let’s look at vehicles. Vehicle livery and branding is about being seen and there is a speciality material you can readily get your hands on that will not just flatter your graphics, it will make them demand attention. Take a look at printable reflective materials.

Reflective materials send light emitted by any source back to that source along a relatively narrow cone. There are a few situations where that effect can conspire to really create a beyond-big impact.

If you print and apply the right material to the flanks of a vehicle, when it is caught in the headlamps of another vehicle, people in and around that vehicle are treated to what amounts to an illuminated livery, markedly brighter than any of the matter that surrounds it. Catching the livery with a flash photograph does the same thing, and when the sun is at the right level and angle, the livery the light catches will be an order of magnitude brighter than anything around it. Stunning.

Reflective materials that can be printed are relatively few and far between which is what makes them specialities. Metamark offers one and there are others to be found. Printing these materials requires a bit of a delicate touch if you are not to overload them with ink and so get a muddy result. There is support out there on the Metamark sales desk to help you.

Applications for flat applied graphics that just ‘light up’ when the correct conditions are present are nothing new of course. Road signs work that way. Having a material that is happy to display digitally printed content though, that is a whole new opportunity.

Your customers are not going to know or understand the potential of this medium. Here is how you can demonstrate the effect even in broad daylight. First, you will need a sample of printable reflective material. Call Metamark or your supplier and they will send you one. Next, print something upon your sample—choose a nice, colourful subject and do go easy on the ink.

The magic happens when you show it to a potential customer. You will need, firstly, said potential customer, secondly, your printed sample, and thirdly, a small LED powered torch. Get your customer to hold the printed sample at head height and at arm’s length in front of him. Now stand behind him and shine the torch over his shoulder onto the graphic. If he does not say ‘Wow!’ or something like that, check you have turned the torch on.

What he will see is a brilliant graphic, apparently emitting light. To see it, is to want it. Make that sale.

Speciality materials come and speciality materials go. This phenomenon is excused by branding said materials with terms like ‘fashion’. One minute you will be falling over yourself to get enough crocodile textured pink wrapping vinyl to deal with the queue of Range Rovers outside your premises, the next, you will find yourself with an embarrassing surplus of the stuff. Some effects that you might have thought of as being on the fashion cusp though, have turned out to be well-paying speciality staples that are here to stay and in demand. Get to know them, use a little, make a lot. Meet carbon fibre.

Carbon fibre speciality films owe nothing to carbon fibre. They are made from beautifully embossed PVC and they do a good job of convincing those looking at them when applied that what has been wrapped is, in fact, honest-to-goodness carbon fibre.



One of the best-paying opportunities that carbon fibre speciality films can be pointed at is wrapping, wait for it, carbon fibre components. Why would someone want to wrap something that actually is carbon fibre, with something that is pretending to be?

It turns out that real carbon fibre bits and pieces have eye-watering prices attached to them. Particularly when they, in turn, are attached to anything which looks vaguely like a classic car. When such classics take to the road, the sort of battle-rash they might pick up from errant stones and the like knocks big bucks off the car’s value and restoration comes with a big ticket too. The answer is, wrap it so that it looks like it is not wrapped. You know how to wrap things so get yourself some carbon fibre film, taking care to ensure you are getting a good one, from a respected brand. Now make yourself available to perform the essential task of protecting the country’s classics.

Of course, the very same carbon fibre film can be applied to parts that wish they were made of carbon fibre. Bonnets, roofs, spoilers, that sort of thing. If anything is wrapped up in carbon fibre’s opportunity, it is irony. You can make something that is carbon fibre look like it is made of carbon fibre. You can add weight to something that is not carbon fibre by making it look lighter. You should not care. This amazing speciality material and your wrapping skills can win you well paying jobs. You can get coloured versions too, for as long as they are fashionable.

While you are pawing classic cars and telling a good story in terms of their protection, it might have occurred to you that practically anything on the road could use a bit of armour and you would be right about that. 3M has a very specialised material that might help you. It started its commercial life protecting the leading edges of helicopter rotors from stone chips.

Scotchgard is made from a plastic that endures extreme elongation and which is soft to the extent it absorbs point-knocks, such as stone impacts, and recovers. Fitting this specialist film is an equally specialist job but there is an awful lot of surfaces out there that need the protection it offers.

Leading the way

Metamark has recognised the opportunity to protect vehicles too, and offers a speciality version of its popular M7 coloured vinyl. MetaScape M7 is a coloured speciality film that has an air evacuation feature and the material has found a ready market with those who use it to wrap white vehicles.



Simister has the facts: “MetaScape M7 is being used now by lots of companies to protect new vans from wear and tear and to change the base white to some other colour. When the lease has ended, the MetaScape M7 film can be removed and not a trace of it remains. What you hand back is a pristine vehicle with higher residuals.”

One of the great things about speciality materials is that they deliver novel and unexpected results using the skills that you, as a sign-maker familiar with handing self-adhesive materials, will have. Metamark Technical Films, that is a subsidiary of the Metamark you already know well, has a new product, its first, that will require some new skills of those who work with it, and that delivers a whole new commercial opportunity.

The new product is Renolit Reface. It is designed for use in refurbishing in the manufacturing of panel clad buildings. The person who knows most about the new product is Mark Smith, Metamark Technical Films’ general manager.

He explains: “Reface is the first in a line of products we’re developing at MTF. It’s an Engineered Filmic Material, that’s to say it looks like a single layer, but is in fact comprised of several. Each layer has a job to do and in the case of Reface, it’s all about cladding building panels in an ultra-durable layer of protection that outperforms paint and other finishes, and which can be applied without disruption.”

Smith goes on to make the point that installing Reface specialist film is specialist too. Training is mandatory and the film itself has handling characteristics that require familiarisation. Could it be that Metamark Technical Films is leading the way into new markets for those with the right skills? It rather looks like it.

Speciality products add value to what might otherwise be termed the ordinary. One opportunity to do just that is a little overlooked in signing terms and yet it is easy to apply, yields great results, and piles on the pounds in terms of a job’s value. Many know it as doming.


Doming takes advantage of one of the world’s physical forces that influence the behaviour of fluids. All fluids want to become perfectly spherical little droplets of themselves. If you remove the forces stopping that happening, they will. Water beading up on a freshly waxed car is an example. Another is what happens if you dispense a liquid resin onto a piece of weeded vinyl.

Physicists feel free to take the floor at this point. The resin flows over the surface of the weeded graphic, and only gets as far as its edge. Once there, if you keep adding resin, the liquid builds a nice rounded edge. Overdo it and it goes everywhere. Get it right and the resin cures into a semi-hard, clear cap. It protects the graphic and it looks amazing.

Liquid Lens is a company active in the field and numerous industry distributors have products on the shelves too. Getting started is ridiculously easy and you will make money on your first job. All you need is the two-pack resin which can come supplied in very convenient little syringe-like containers, and the thing said syringe fits in. That and a few nozzles and you really are in the doming business.

Doming is a speciality technology that needs to be in the room with a creative. Creative practitioners can take this technology to places it has never been before.

Another technology once took graphics to places they had never been before, and, though they have been around for a while now, floor graphics sit just waiting for a big push from someone and the materials to produce them are there in the covers of many industry’s suppliers’ swatches—well, those that actually have swatches.

Floor graphics cannot be approached in anything other than the right way. You will need the right material, or your work will get scuffed, kicked up, tripped over, and removed in that order.

Clearly, a few microns of inkjet ink will not have the muscle to endure pedestrian traffic shuffling its way around, for example, a supermarket. Laminates though come as part of any self-respecting floor graphics system and they are typically as tough as they come and heavily textured. The adhesive on the back of the part that is adhered to the floor is similarly well muscled. Taken together, floor graphics’ speciality material systems deliver the means to get graphics installed in a place you would least expect to see them. That means they register an impact. Job done.

The new wrapping

Speciality materials targeted at décor application make it into this discussion but only by rushing in before the door closes. Why is that? Décor is about to become, if it is not already, a mainstream signing application, or a market of very sizeable proportions.

If you are in any doubt that the décor opportunity is here and just waiting, look what the bigger players are doing to promote it. Opinion leader HP put out a brochure some forty-six pages long to launch the discussion. Metamark has not just put a few rolls of material on the shelves, it has launched the whole Décor Mark range. Someone in your town whom you have never heard of and who probably does not know you, has a place that may look a bit like yours housing the same kit, and is just doing digital décor.

Décor materials for the digital age come in almost as much variety as the staple ranges but they are specialities despite that. Décor materials have a different mission in life. That means they need to be of specialist design and formulation to work, and they have to appeal to a very different set of mission imperatives because they are not much used on vans and shop fronts of course.

Tony Baxter is a director of The Voodoo DesignWorks in Bristol. The company was in the pioneering vanguard that worked with early stage developments in digital décor and now offers it as part of its mainstream output. He says: “Voodoo does a lot of work involved in the development of shopping centres and their brands. With speciality materials supporting décor applications, we have at our disposal what amounts to a new medium.

“We install shopping centre signs and other infrastructure of course, but the décor element genuinely enables us to develop branding continuations on an epic scale. It’s scale that makes it so appealing really. We can transform the ambience in a small restaurant, or we can tie together eclectic programmes and give them a sense of unity.
These specialist materials give us the means to deliver colour and design to whole expanses of buildings that were only recently the exclusive province of other trades.”


Baxter makes a good point. Thanks to décor-led speciality materials, decor is not another trade. It is fast becoming core to signing. If you are not into décor at the moment and wonder what it takes to get there, plenty of information and samples await. Metamark has its Décor Mark range and HP offers the substantial document noted above, which shines a light on the subject.

It is about getting creative, working with the materials and letting the world know you are able. The materials are out there on the shelves. The hardware you need is in the workshop. Customers await and are always looking for something new. Why not offer it to them?


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