Church’s Sleek New Student Center Gets an Old-Time-y Touch

6 FInished
Clear Lake Press installed this custom drawing as a backdrop to this meeting area in St. Thomas More Catholic Newman Center in the Minnesota State University Campus’ student center. Photo credit: Clear Lake Press

 

With all of the creative minds and customization options in the large-format and graphics world these days, there’s no reason not to give a new building a little extra personality.

That certainly was the mindset for St. Thomas More Catholic Newman Center on the Minnesota State University Campus with its newly constructed student center in Mankato, MN.

Completed in the fall of 2014, the center’s interior spaces were blank canvases — ideal for custom graphics and finishing touches to give the center a welcoming and friendly feel. One area of the new space, a sleek, circular counter set up for group chats and snacks, was a perfect place for a personal touch.

Eric Erickson's original drawing that was scanned into Photoshop and enlarged 750 percent. Photo credit: Clear Lake Press
Eric Erickson’s original drawing that was scanned into Photoshop and enlarged 750 percent. Photo credit: Clear Lake Press

Working with Clear Lake Signs of Waseca, MN, a division of Clear Lake Press, staff at St. Thomas More and Eric Erickson, Clear Lake’s pre-press systems administrator, graphic designer and artist, put their heads together to come up with some large-format graphics ideas for the blank wall behind the counter.

At first, the thought was to enlarge a photo as the backdrop, but as Erickson chatted with the church leadership, a new idea emerged.

“As we were discussing the details, it evolved into a custom art piece with a lot of elements relevant to their history and who they were and their mission,” Erickson says.

He took pencil to paper and started sketching. An old-fashioned, Irish pub theme emerged with a pencil sketch of a wooden bookshelf, a brick wall, Fr. Paul Halloran lifting his glass and a series of taps named after the nine virtues found in Galatians 5:22-23: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The books, photos and trophy drawn into the bookshelf all have special meaning to the church and its members.

The original drawing was 25-by-29 inches, which Erickson then scanned in at 1200 ppi and enlarged 750 percent. He added color to the logo and printed the image on four 44-by-150-inch panels onto LexJet Print-N-Stick Fabric using his Canon imagePROGRAF printer. Clear Lake Press’ diverse services include web and sheet-fed presses, interior and exterior signs, vehicle decals and wraps, banners and all types of fabric applications.

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Clear Lake Press’ large-format expert Tonya Wittman helped with the installation of the mural, printed on LexJet Print-N-Stick Fabric. Photo credit: Clear Lake Press

“I had used Print-N-Stick on smaller projects. This is our largest Print-N-Stick project to date,” Erickson says. “I like it because of the white point of the paper – there’s very little show-through of the wall color underneath it, the vibrancy of color and the fact that it’s repositional. This project itself isn’t really a repositional application, but if they ever want to take it down, the Print-N-Stick won’t damage the wall underneath it.”

While it took the Canon only about a half hour to print each panel, Erickson and Clear Lake Press’ large-format expert Tonya Wittman spent the better part of a day installing the panels in the new fellowship hall.

“It was one of those projects, when it started, I was extremely nervous about it,” Erickson says. “All of those nerves were laid to rest as we were installing it. People would walk in and comment how much they loved the different elements and style of it and everyone was just so amazed by it.”

Next up: St. Thomas More and Clear Lake Press have more projects in store to complement this project and the previously completed exterior and interior signage for the building. Erickson says they’re working on a 12-foot mural of teen’s faces in St. Thomas More’s game room.

Clear Lake Press Prints Nostalgic Office Décor

Wall Mural by Clear Lake Press

Eric Erickson, prepress systems administrator for Clear Lake Press, Waseca, Minn., loves LexJet Print-N-Stick Fabric, and is sticking it everywhere to give customers and prospects a bigger-than-life visual of what they can do with the printable adhesive-back fabric.

The nostalgic photo above was applied at the offices of Clear Lake Press to illustrate the eye-catching displays that can be easily and economically created in similar settings. Erickson has also created visuals in various forms and formats for other environments, like cubicle and bedroom walls.

Cubicle Decor by Clear Lake Press
Clear Lake Press made a cubicle more livable with a view using LexJet Print-N-Stick Fabric.

“We’re trying to provide some creative ways of using it, more than just rectangles on walls. You make up something, show it off, and it helps spark ideas for use in their home or business,” says Erickson.

Erickson adds that the unique adhesive, which makes it easy to re-position, remove and re-use is also a big selling point to customers.

“Now that we have offered Print-N-Stick and are showing it off, a lot of people have been asking about it. For instance, we printed some artwork for the Waseca United Way from the front of their brochure. We made a large graphic out of it with Print-N-Stick for use at local businesses to put on their walls and promote the United Way. When they’re done with the promotion, they can peel it off and put it back on the backing paper and hold onto it for future use,” says Erickson.

Printed Wall Graffiti by Clear Lake Press
Wall murals don’t have to be plain rectangles as this cut-out printed wall graffiti illustrates.

For the classic kids’ lemonade stand photo from 1967, Erickson asked the Waseca County Historical Society, a long-time customer, if he could use the photo for their wall. The Historical Society was happy to oblige (with the requisite “be careful with the photo” instructions) and Erickson scanned the original 6 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ black-and-white photo.

The photo was scanned with a desktop Epson scanner and brought into Photoshop for touch-up to get the right tone, and blown up to its final wall mural size of 12′ x 8′. The image was printed in two panels on the company’s Canon iPF8300 and applied horizontally with the help of employees Tonya Wittman and Cory Stencel.

Wall Graphics by Clear Lake Press
Clear Lake Press printed this baby room decor with Print-N-Stick Fabric.

“There’s a little bit of an overlap that you can see. This was our first time applying more than one panel and we learned from the experience. Next time, we’ll include an overlap and slice it right down the middle and take off the excess for a clean, exact cut,” says Erickson. “We love the material and the way the bright white point on the fabric reproduces artwork, whether it’s black-and-white or full color. The coordinator at the Historical Society was thrilled with the mural.

Printing a Wall of Faces to Promote Local Education

Creating wall murals with an inkjet printer and Tyvek

Traditionally a commercial printer, Clear Lake Press moved into wide-format printing earlier this year with the purchase of a Canon iPF8300 printer. The diversification into wide format, as well as apparel, has helped the printing company grow and better serve its expanding client base.

“You have to change with the times; you can’t be a one-dimensional printer anymore,” says Eric Erickson, prepress systems administrator for Clear Lake Press, which is based in Waseca, Minn. “We’ve had the Canon since February and in addition to variety of wide format work, we’ve also produced canvas reproductions using LexJet’s Sunset Select Matte Canvas, mounted using the Sunset HD Pro Stretcher Kits and finished with either Sunset Gloss Coating or Sunset Satin Coating. They’re all phenomenal products and the stretcher kits are easy to assemble and mount.”

A recent project for the nearby Austin (Minnesota) Public Schools to produce a large-scale wall mural requiring multiple large panels output precisely and quickly was a great testament to Clear Lake Press’ new capabilities. The wall is a linear collage of student and teacher portraits for a campaign called Austin Public Schools Inside Out (click here to read more about the project and the photographers behind it).

The job of Clear Lake Press was to reproduce the images on a media that would resist Minnesota’s changing and sometimes brutal weather over the next six months or so. After consulting with Rob Finkel, the company’s LexJet customer specialist, Erickson and Clear Lake Press president Dan Nitz decided to use LexJet TOUGHcoat 3R DuPont Tyvek.

“The combination of the inkjet material and the water-resistant, pigmented UV inks has worked out well so far. If anything, the first thing that will give out is the glue and tape they used to apply the panels because the mural is on a porous brick surface,” says Erickson.

The school installed the panels using double-stick tape and a water-soluble wheat paste so that removal will be fairly simple with minimal residue left behind. Clear Lake Press printed each student panel at about 3 1/2′ x 4′. Each teacher panel is about four times as large and printed in two panels, seamed together with double-stick tape.

“The printing went great. They were all monochrome images, so we utilized the black inks. The student photos printed in six minutes, which is extremely fast. I used actions tools in Photoshop so that it would produce the same image size and other characteristics, like lighting, consistently and automatically. That way it only took a minute or two to process each one, put a white frame around it and export to the Canon,” explains Erickson.

The mural was installed last month and should be up for the next few months at the high school.