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Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Vinyl Application Christmas Gift

Prints by Stephen Edward Graphics

Just in time for Christmas, Stephen Weber, owner of Stephen Edward Graphics, Brandon, Wis., treated himself to an early gift, a 56-inch wide Big Squeegee. Just in time, too, since he had some large (4×8) background panels to print for a Christmas play at a local church.

Big Squeegee Vinyl Application“I had never applied vinyl to something that big. Typically we use a hand squeegee. I started doing it with a hand squeegee and realized it wouldn’t work very well,” recalls Weber. “I found out about the Big Squeegee at an online forum. I ordered it, tried it and the first one worked flawlessly.”

Weber produced three large panel backdrops, printed on HP Permanent Adhesive Matte Vinyl with his new HP Latex 310 Printer from LexJet.

HP Latex 310 Printer“You roll the print up onto a roll. The squeegee sits behind the roll and you walk the squeegee down the board. It takes the backer off as you apply it and goes right along the board,” explains Weber. “It came out real smooth. You can also use it to apply laminates. I didn’t laminate these prints, but I’ve printed some car decals that I applied laminate to and it worked very well. Then you can take it to the cutter and contour-cut it.”

For demo videos of the Big Squeegee applicator, click here. And, to find out more about the HP Latex 310 Printer and HP Permanent Adhesive Matte Vinyl, contact a LexJet print specialist at 800-453-9538.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Printing and Sticking Custom Wedding DVD Photo Covers

Custom DVD Cover by Mark Hawkins Photography

Mark and Kelly Hawkins own and operate a high-end wedding photography studio in Green Bay, Wis., where a personal, customized experience for the bride and groom is job one. To elevate their print products, the couple invested in a Canon iPF8400 wide-format inkjet printer they picked up from LexJet and their personal printer specialist, Rob Finkel.

LexJet Print-N-Stick Fabric DVD CoverMark has also struck up a friendship with Andy Wredberg, owner of AW Artworks in Sun Prairie, Wis., whose work shows up regularly here at the LexJet Blog. Andy helped Mark take the printer upgrade plunge, a plunge that Mark says made a big splash.

“We only shoot about 30 weddings per year and we want them to get the highest value possible, so the more customization we can do, the better. The Canon is such an easy printer to use, and the Photoshop plug-in that comes with it also makes it super-simple,” Mark says. “I told Rob yesterday that the bottom line is that when I hit that print button it’s exactly the way it looks on my monitor; the LexJet profiles are dead-on with pretty much every media type. It’s mind-blowing. Time is money, and I don’t want to waste time, ink and material, and with this printer I don’t.”

Mark Hawkins PhotographyAfter a wedding, Mark and Kelly deliver two main print products: a wedding album and a wall collage. Mark says that one of the reasons they got the printer was to deliver bigger and better wall collages to their clients.

“What spurred the purchase of the iPF8400 was to do some higher-end artwork; not just canvas wraps, but art paper and boutique applications for the wedding market. There are a lot of cool uses for a variety of print media in the wedding market. People spend all this money already, so they should have nice custom printed products,” Mark says.

The client also gets a DVD of all the photos from the wedding, but Mark ran into an issue when he ran out of DVD cases. The new Canon printer and LexJet Print-N-Stick Fabric came to the rescue, not only giving Mark a workaround on deadline, but a new way to present DVDs to clients.

“We were out of the cases yesterday, so I used some scrap art paper that I cut to size and folded in half, printed a nice image from the wedding on one side and the photo release for the DVD on the other side that gives them permission to do whatever they want with the images. That way you don’t have to use another piece of paper to print a release, so it kills two birds with one stone. Plus, the Print-N-Stick makes it easy to take it off and reapply it if I don’t align it correctly,” Mark says. “I love having a fully customizable product that gives us an opportunity to recycle and re-use materials that would otherwise go to waste.”

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Life Size Woodland Trail Printed on Canvas

Blueprint SolutionsOne of the great things about large format inkjet printing is the ability to immerse someone in an environment, which is exactly what Blueprint Solutions recently did with a life-size reproduction on canvas of a woodland trail near Fond du Lac, Wis.

“The customer is using it as a wall mural. It’s a photo of a trail near his home, which he wanted life size so it seems that you can walk right into it, and it fits nicely on his wall from floor to ceiling,” says Scott Draves, owner of Blueprint Solutions in Fond du Lac. “He told me that if anyone was interested in getting a canvas that large he would allow them to come into their house and look at the finished product. It was pretty incredible that he offered to do that.”

Blueprint Solutions, as the name of the company implies, specializes in document reproduction, from small to large format, primarily for the construction industry. Over the past few years, however, the company has diversified its large format products and services, including canvas printing.

For this project, Blueprint Solutions used Sunset Select Matte Canvas printed in one piece at 60″ x 84″ on the company’s Canon iPF9000S 60″ inkjet printer. Finishing what Draves says is their largest stretched canvas piece to date was a challenge.

“The initial issue was getting all the pieces together, and that’s where Erin [Krcmar, Blueprint Solutions’ personal customer specialist] was the biggest help: making sure we got what we needed with the bracing and at the right sizes we needed,” explains Draves. “We used the Sunset Pro Stretcher Bars that are 1 1/2″ deep. I really like the Sunset Stretcher Bars; they’re very easy to work with. On smaller pieces I can put a canvas wrap together in less than half an hour, but this particular piece took me a couple of hours to assemble. We took it slowly because it was so large, the print was flawless and we didn’t want to have to re-do it.”

Draves turned a pool table in the company’s back office into a production table to accommodate the extra-large print on which it was wrapped and coated. Draves used two coats of ClearStar ClearShield Type C to finish the print for delivery to the customer.

“It worked out really slick. Everything is nice and smooth and flat and it came together perfectly,” adds Draves.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Home Improvement with a Canvas Gallery Wrap Collage

Canvas Wrap CollageOne of the most important things you can do from a sales and marketing standpoint, particularly in our obviously visual market, is to show potential clients how they can display their images.

You can say “canvas,” for instance, and people generally like the thought of images printed on canvas, but they don’t necessarily know how to translate it to their particular space, whether it’s a home, office or retail space.

That’s why Andy Wredberg at AW Artworks is constantly showcasing new and unique ways of displaying prints at his studio, and most recently at his home. Besides, Wredberg’s wife recently asked him why he was doing all this cool stuff for clients, but nothing for their home.

So, Wredberg did a family portrait photo shoot at Wisconsin’s state capitol in Madison. Wredberg’s also a talented photographer who was able to sneak into some of the photos with a remote shutter release.

Wredberg then took the images and created an approximately 6′ x 6′ canvas gallery wrap collage from the photo shoot printed on LexJet Sunset Select Matte Canvas. It consists of nine pieces: three 8x13s, two 10x20s, a 14×20, a 14×29, and two 20x30s.

“I’ve seen some collages online, but never tried doing one that extensively. People love canvas, but they have a hard time picturing how it would work for them and incorporate it. Seeing a collage on a wall gives them a better vision of something they could do with it,” says Wredberg, who posted the project on his Facebook page.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Simplifying Sales and Sidestepping Sign Restrictions with Perforated Window Film

Sears Auto Center Window Graphics by AW Artworks
Nothing fancy here, but these window graphics, printed on LexJet Aqueous Perforated Window Vinyl (70/30) by AW Artworks, get the word out about all of the services this Sears Auto Center provides.

On-premise signage is arguably the most effective way to get the word out about your business to a mobile audience, especially given the fracturing of media through this, that and the other app and social media.

Many businesses struggle with restrictive sign codes or shopping center guidelines that make it difficult to stand out from the crowd. In the case of a Sears Auto Center in Madison, Wis., the mall in which the center is located doesn’t allow much outside of a main ID sign.

The Auto Center tried various types of banners and even a large Michelin Man blow-up, all of which had to be taken down per the mall’s signage rules. So the Auto Center’s owner turned to Andy Wredberg, owner of AW Artworks, based down the road in Sun Prairie, Wis.

Though this type of project is not in AW Artworks’ wheelhouse, as Wredberg puts it, he wanted to help and try something outside his wheelhouse, which is primarily fine art and photo reproductions.

“They had some mismatched vinyl lettering on their garage doors and wanted something more attractive to draw more attention to the variety of services they offer,” explains Wredberg. “I talked to Rob Finkel at LexJet and he recommended LexJet Aqueous Perforated Vinyl (70/30), so we ordered a sample and tested it on the window. We ordered a roll of it, laid it out, printed it, sprayed it with a clear, water-based poly and installed it today. It went on easily and it looks sharp. They wanted to be able to see out and it provides some shade inside as well.”

Car Window Graphics
With the leftover window perf material from the Sears project, AW Artworks produced these popular stickers for the back windows of cars for Wisconsin-proud people. Andy Wredberg reports that they’ve sold about a dozen of these.

Now this type of project is squarely in AW Artworks’ wheelhouse, and Wredberg plans to use it on the studio’s sidewalk-facing windows to promote this additional product line. Based on similar window promotions AW Artworks has done in the past for banner stands and canvas wraps, AW Artworks should see more of this type of work in the future.

“I was a little concerned at first because we don’t normally do this type of application. I thought installation would be beyond my skill set, but I just pulled the release liner off a couple of inches to get it started, smoothed it down and was really easy. It only took about an hour,” says Wredberg. “It’s very readable from far away. They’re really a full-service auto center and I don’t think a lot of people realize the capabilities they have, so this will help them.”

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in Case Studies & Profiles
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Museum Wall Murals Made Simple

Triad Creative Group Produces Wall Murals for a Museum
Triad Creative Group printed historical wall murals on LexJet Simple Flo Wrap Vinyl laminated with LexJet Simple Flo Wrap Gloss UV Laminate. Triad applied subtle duotones to the images to complement the general color scheme of each exhibit.

 

Illustrating history can be tricky, but that’s why you leave it to consummate professionals like Triad Creative Group, Brookfield, Wis., which specializes in producing brilliant displays for museums and trade shows.

Museum Wall MuralTriad Creative Group won the bid to provide graphics for the Wade House Visitors Center and Carriage House shortly after the opening of the 38,000 square foot facility in Greenbush, Wis.

The specifications for the 18 wall murals depicting horse-drawn apparatus and their use throughout history originally called for prints produced with eco-solvent inks. Triad Creative Group took that specification to the next level with the purchase of an HP Designjet L26500 latex inkjet printer from LexJet.

“We had been in conversations with Kara Work [Triad’s LexJet customer specialist] about upgrading to the HP latex printer. I discussed latex-based prints on vinyl as a way to meet the specifications with our designers and this project pushed us toward purchasing the printer. It was such a huge job it virtually paid for the printer,” says John Toth, project manager for Triad Creative Group.

Museum Wall MuralsOnce the printer was selected, installed and ready to go, the next step was choosing the right material.

Toth was looking for something economical, that would image well and would be simple to work with at the installation site. Work recommended LexJet Simple Flo Wrap Vinyl laminated with LexJet Simple Flo Wrap Gloss UV Laminate.

“It’s a very nice material; it’s very forgiving on a multi-panel project like this. You need the ability to stick it down and pull it back up, which this allowed us to do with its air-egress liner. The color gamut and imagery looks incredible. All the archived photographs that we scanned and put into use with Simple Flo really popped,” says Toth.

Inkjet Printed Wall MuralsMost of the murals, which ranged from 8′ x 10′ to 12′ x 15′, were applied to wood frames with primed MDF faces offset from the wall, another was applied to Sintra and a few were applied directly to the walls. “The Simple Flo adhered beautifully to all the surfaces. It was also easy to trim, so I was very pleased with how it performed,” says Toth.

Mural application began in February and the rest were installed as the exhibits were finalized throughout the museum, with the final wall mural applied last week. It was essentially a year-long project as plans were made and Triad scanned and touched up the historical photos that would be used.

Donor Wall Graphics
The donor wall consists of LexJet Sunset Velvet Rag SUV applied to 6mm Sintra with 1/4″ glass stood off the image an inch. The glass has second-surface vinyl lettering. The portrait panel is Sunset Velvet Rag applied to Sintra.

“The photos weren’t in great condition, so we had to re-touch them in Photoshop. Depending on the location within the museum, each area has its own color designation. They’re all grayscale images, but a duotone was applied based on the color scheme of the area in which they were installed. The reddish ones, for instance, were tied to a firefighting theme,” explains Toth.

Triad also used LexJet Sunset Velvet Rag SUV for the donor wall that Toth says was a nice complement to the overall project.

“Kara was very helpful with finding the right media for this project. She is awesome, not just from the sales end, but from a technical support aspect. She’s very knowledgeable about media for different applications. She’s always been there for us,” adds Toth.