The Power of Trade Signage
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SignLink takes a look back over the past 12 months to celebrate some of the most colourful and eye-catching work produced by wide-format print companies in the UK and overseas
With so many excellent examples of wide-format print work, we could easily fill an entire issue of SignLink with images of projects from all over the world. Be it striking wall and floor graphics in local shopping centres or gigantic building wraps covering a skyscraper, there is plenty to celebrate in this vibrant and innovative sector.
However, we have managed to resist the temptation and keep the tribute to just a few pages of this issue. Here, we cast our minds back over the past year and pick out some of the most memorable projects that adorned the pages of SignLink and pay tribute to the companies that put in so much hard work to make these applications a success.
First up, we have Watford-based large-format print and specialist fabrication company Stylographics, which used Print Floor from Soyang Europe to produce a striking retail window display for global fashion brand Marc Jacobs at one of its UK stores.
Stylographics was tasked with creating an eye-catching display that would draw in passers-by as they walked past the shop. Working with Marc Jacobs, Stylographics came up with a bold, black and white design, with this being wrapped around the entire window frame at the front of the shop.
The company printed the design onto the Print Floor PVC flooring material from Soyang Europe using its Durst P10 250HS UV inkjet printer.
“Having used Print Floor from Soyang Europe for a number of years and on a whole range of projects, we knew straight away that this application would require the same solution,” says Siobhan Storey, marketing manager, at Stylographics, adding: “What stands out for us and what we like most about Print Floor is that it is a very hard-wearing and reliable product. We rely on it time and time again for all sorts of applications.”
Keeping with the subject of interior décor – a growing market for those in the wide-format print market – large-format print and design business Print Station used Kavalan PVC-free banner to deck out a vegan restaurant in Windsor. One of the core challenges for this job was to identify a material that would fit in with the restaurant’s environmental ethos.
Rajan Chonkaria, director at Print Station, spoke with the team at CMYUK and quickly singled out Kavalan as the best solution for the project. Chonkaria and Print Station selected Kavalan Gecko 320 GB, a greyback wallcovering material, for the interiors. This was the first time the team had used Kavalan banners. Print Station used a JETRIX flatbed LED printer to print onto the Kavalan material.
What’s more, the opening of the restaurant resulted in another project for Print Station when a guest on learning about the process and material used, decided she wanted her daughter’s bedroom wallpapered with Kavalan.
“It's going to open a lot of doors for us, because now we can approach tenders in a different way and say, we want to introduce you to this product,” Chonkaria says, adding: “That way it's beneficial for us and it's going to be beneficial for the customer as well.”
From interior décor to outdoor opportunities now and over in South Africa, sign manufacturer and installation company Prestige Signage created a set of floor graphics to help a customer celebrate this year’s Pride month.
The annual Pride event celebrates the LGBTQ+ community and Prestige’s client was keen to get in on the festivities, instructing Prestige to produce rainbow-themed floor graphics that led the way from the pavement outside its building to the front doors of the site.
Prestige selected Polar Grip white polymeric self-adhesive vinyl for the rainbow graphics and used Protac Floortex 200 PVC over-laminating film to protect the graphics from footfall up and down the stairs outside the building, which houses a busy call centre. The company used its HP Latex 800W machine to print all graphics in-house.
“With the product being installed on stairs that have high traffic throughout the day, we needed a tough, consistent product that could take the stress while also being safe to walk on,” Prestige chief executive, Belinda Lotter, says.
“The slip rating of the Floortex laminate and the aggressive adhesive of Polar Grip made these the perfect products for our client’s needs. Polar Grip also has excellent printing properties on our printer; the vivid ink colours are amazing and make the rainbow shades look just incredible.
“The customer was amazed by the vibrant look and feel of the branding; it was better than anything they had imagined!”
Keeping with the outdoor and overseas theme, French print service provider H2O teamed up with HP to produce a range of applications for use at this year’s edition of the world-famous Cannes Film Festival.
HP served as an official partner and exclusive print technology provider, with H2O, one of its local customers and users of HP Latex technology, taking on the task of producing materials for the event. H2O used its HP Latex R2000 and Latex 3100 to create all of the signage and displays including rigid panels, outdoor signage, barriers, banners, and posters – with more than 1,500sq m of material produced in total.
The customer was amazed by the vibrant look and feel of the branding; it was better than anything they had imagined
Where the project really stands out is its sustainable edge. The water-based ink technology on HP Latex printers is much kinder to the environment than other ink types such as solvent, eco-solvent, and UV, meaning the materials produced for the job had less impact on the world.
Add in that HP’s new carton-based cartridges, which are made mainly made from cardboard and reduce plastic usage by 80% and carbon emissions by 60%, and the project not only looked the part, but won praise for its sustainability – something that is a core focus of the festival itself, as well as H2O and HP.
Sylvain Vivier, director of H20, comments: “In an increasingly digital world, the power of printed graphic arts remains as strong as ever. We set out to deliver imagery through technical and creative excellence, as well as expertise that aligns with our and Cannes’ CSR values. Along with HP, our collective commitment to sustainable printing is clear to see through the many print creations at the festival.”
Going even bigger and the ever-innovative Embrace Building Wraps has drawn widespread praise for a major job it carried out in London in collaboration with furniture store IKEA to promote the opening of its second small store in Central London.
Embrace produced a large, printed wrap to cover scaffolding during works to transform the former Topshop location at Oxford Circus into a small IKEA store. While the sheer size of the wrap was impressive enough itself, the unique design is what has really helped to capture the attention of passers-by. The wrap was designed to look like a giant version of one of IKEA’s iconic FRAKTA blue bags.
The installation comprised six fully engineered offset frames provided by Embrace. Five of these carry a silhouette line drawing of the building itself, complete with the Westminster City Council street nameplates in their original positions. The final banner section replicates the giant blue FRAKTA bag with three dimensional handles.
The project required 1,000 linear metres of scaffold tubes for the offset frames and uprights, and 2,400sq m of scaffold wraps, printed on PVC-free Kavalan Sunlight Weldable. In total, the wrap covered an area equivalent of 44 double-decker buses, while the bag handles measure up to 32m long and 1.8m wide.
Factoid: IKEA opened its first store in Sweden in 1958 but did not expand into the UK until 1987
“We provided our full project management service from creative design for the building silhouette design, on-site co-ordination with the main contractor McLaren to the print and install, working closely with the scaffolding contractor TRAD,” says Greg Forster, managing director at Embrace.
“We are especially delighted that the FRAKTA bag and handle really pops out and will get the conversation going both on and offline.”
Moving back inside for our final project and SignLink was keen to pay tribute to this piece in particular as it showcases the power of combining more traditional print applications with modern technologies and techniques within the digital signage and display sector.
Over in Toronto in Canada, sign-maker Minoh Inc used Drytac ReTac Textures Linen embossed film to produce a series of graphics that were integrated as part of a wider interior video wall display.
Working with Marlin Spring, an integrated real estate company that acquires, develops, constructs, and repositions assets throughout North America, Minoh printed the graphics in-house on its HP Latex 365. The graphics were then installed around a series of screens inside the Marlin Spring office, with the screens cleverly overlapping wording without completely blocking the oversized text.
Other aspects of the job included a graphic that listed all the key amenities in the area local to Marlin Spring’s latest real estate project in Toronto, helping to highlight what might be in store for those who opt to live in the region.
“The customer was absolutely over the moon with the look of the graphics after they were installed on the walls,” says Minoh sales manager, Steven Mayers, who adds: “Such was the success of the job that the client will be looking to use this method again on other projects and we look forward to supporting them with future jobs.
“The Minoh team was also incredibly impressed with Drytac ReTac Textures Linen as a product, and we will most certainly be using the material again in the future. It was incredibly easy to install and was great to work with, from start to finish.”
To support wide-format printers, there are a number of awards and accolades that they can win to recognise their work. This year, swissQprint ran the swissQprint Creative Challenge for the third time, inviting swissQprint users from around the world to put forward applications for consideration.
This year, Haas Werbetechnik of Austria one first prize with ‘Symphony of creation’, a unique composition of highly varied materials and printing technique. These include metallic effects, droptix, white, UV varnish and 3D relief printing. Werbetechnik also won the swissQprint Creative Challenge in 2019.
Given how tricky it was to select just a handful of projects for inclusion here, one thing is most certainly for sure: the wide-format print market is not only alive and well; it is leading the way in terms of innovation in the signage and display sector.
