Discover Media That Matters at Printing United

We are beyond excited for Printing United later this month. This year is sure to be full of exciting trends, new innovations and award-winning ideas. You can find your LexJet favorites in booth #6810. Our focus is on the hand-selected, state-of-the-art media offerings that provide versatility, production excellence, environmental consciousness and cost awareness that allow you to create amazing signage, graphics and more, while balancing your business-building budget.

In booth #6810, you’ll get a hands-on look at several samples, and be sure to check out our installation demos, too. Our team will be standing by to guide you to the right media for any project, from vinyl wall wraps and soft signage displays to elegant retail décor and fine art reproductions, and much more. Our teammates from S-One Labels & Packaging will also be displaying the latest in sustainable packaging materials and specialty coatings for a variety of applications.

Be sure to check out some of our most buzz-worthy media products, including:

  • Squid. This is the new self-adhesive fabric for window displays that everyone is talking about. It’s easy to install and provides an elegant look for retail environments or can add privacy in a corporate setting.
  • HP Adhesive Vinyl & Laminates. The new line of products is changing the game for printers. We’ve added even more products, like HP Grip, with a strong adhesive, and a new cast overlaminate. See them in action!
  • Award-winning Canvas. We’ll be displaying the 2019 SGIA Product of the Year – Media – Textile – Canvas: Fredrix Metallic Gold Canvas; as well as last year’s big winner: HP Recycled Satin Canvas, made from 100% recycled water bottles.
  • Fabrics. We’ve got several options here, whether you prefer latex or dye-sub. We’ve got options for a variety of applications, like soft signage, backlit displays, tableskirts, SEG frames and more.

We’ve got Show Specials, too, that you won’t want to miss! See you in Dallas later this month!

Still need a Printing United Expo Pass? Go to THIS LINK and use promo code 76842.

Get Your Free Printing United Expo Pass Today!

If you’re planning on attending Printing United this year, we’ve got you covered with a free Expo pass for the trade show in Dallas, Texas, Oct. 23-25 (a $35 savings). This year’s show brings the best of SGIA together, including wide-format along with textile, commercial and package printing, all under one roof.

To receive your pass, please use promo code 76842 on THIS LINK.

During the show, you’ll see the latest offerings in each of the market segments, and learn about the latest trends, techniques and workflow strategies. You’ll be able to view the 2019 SGIA Product of the Year Awards, which includes Fredrix Metallic Gold Canvas, a LexJet exclusive in the U.S.

In booth #6810, you’ll also discover some of the latest advancements and trends on the media that matters for your business today. We’ll feature printed samples of the HP Adhesive Vinyl portfolio, upscale wallcoverings and other décor products, sustainable print material solutions, as well as unique window graphic materials, like Squid.

This year, more than 600 exhibitors will take over 720,000 square feet at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. Get your Expo pass and meet us there!

Prints That Win: Urban Assault

For a professional photographer who has made a career of portraits featuring Santa Claus, the PPA Southwest District winner in the artist category, titled “Urban Assault,” was a huge departure for Chris Smith, M.Photog.

Smith captured the Sunset Print Award-winning image during a SWAT team training session in Midlothian, Texas, when he was requested to shoot the training. It turned out to be an ideal opportunity to get creative for print competition.

“Competition work is something that I do for myself because it is so detailed,” Smith says. “It is very therapeutic digging into that level of detail.”

Prints that Win: Nice Catch

Nice Catch by Melissa Jeffcoat

Nice Catch indeed. This LexJet Sunset Award winner, which won Best of Show at the Texas PPA print competition earlier this year, certainly caught the eyes of the judges at the competition, and for good reason.

It’s a picture-perfect rendition of Americana, and more specifically, an Oklahoma slice of it. The red road brings attention to the focal point of the image, which was captured by Melissa Jeffcoat, owner of Melissa Jean Photography in Tecumseh, Okla.

Jeffcoat set up the scene with her two boys, having them walk up and down the road until she captured the scene as she originally envisioned it.

“My older son caught the fish and they kept walking until I got what I was looking for,” says Jeffcoat. “I bribed them with snow cones.”

Jeffcoat says the image reflects almost exactly what the scene and the lighting looked like at capture, excepting some work to take out some distracting sky on the horizon and filling in with some trees. Shot at dusk, Jeffcoat says the timing was right to bring out red of the road and all the other subtle tones that make this an outstanding image.

The image was printed for competition by BWC in Dallas using a chemical photo process on a glossy pearl paper.

Creating and Applying Bowl-Worthy Graphics that Stick

Applying graphics to a stadium

The AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic has a storied history in the annals of college football. For most of its 77-year history, this big game used to be played in the actual Cotton Bowl Stadium at Fair Park in Dallas, but is now played at the state-of-the-art Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.

Wall graphics for a football gameThe new venue requires an equally state-of-the-art approach to the myriad of graphics that cover the stadium to promote the big game, recognizing the teams and branding the bowl, and that’s where E.H. Teasley & Co. steps in.

E.H. Teasley & Co., based in Dallas, has been producing and installing the graphics for the Cotton Bowl for the past 18 years – the last four at Cowboys Stadium. The difficult and time-consuming task of wall graphics installations at Cowboys Stadium has been much easier with the use of Photo Tex Repositionable Fabric.

Applying graphics to elevator doors“We spent the first two years trying to find something that would adhere to the concrete walls. We tested a material during the summer before the initial opening of the stadium and that material seemed to work perfectly, but when we applied the vinyl a week before the game, in the winter months, the ambient temperature of the concrete had dropped considerably. The next day, we received a call from the Cotton Bowl folks telling us that a majority of our stickers had fallen off the walls. After all of our testing we were very surprised. We found a way to fix the signs that failed, but it made the project much more difficult and time-consuming,” says Jeff Teasley, owner of E.H. Teasley & Co. “In 2011 we were lucky to find PhotoTex. It’s a lighter weight material, and the adhesion properties are so much better than what we used for the prior game. To make sure we were on the right track before the game installation, we took it to a business near us with stucco-type walls. The graphic stayed up there for months in all of the outdoor elements. Seeing this, we felt confident that Photo Tex would do the job. Now we could sleep at night.”

Branding a hotel lobby with large signsThe graphics were printed on the company’s superwide solvent printers, which included a quantity of 352 four foot by four foot die-cut helmets and logos cut on a Zund cutter. These graphics lined the various levels of the stadium, the tunnels where the teams enter the field, as well as the lobbies of the host hotels. The hotel elevators were also branded with Photo Tex graphics.

“The elevator graphics were a lot better with the Photo Tex product. With the vinyl we were using before, people would tend to pick at it because it was thicker, where the Photo Tex is thinner and appeared to be painted on the door. Not one of the Photo Tex Graphics peeled off of any of the elevators. We used the EX version in a couple of places where we thought it might need a little more adhesion, and overall it went very smoothly this year and we were extremely pleased,” adds Teasley.

Re-Orient: Photo Tex Inkjet Art with Flair

Linda Guy is a fine artist who teaches screen printing, lithography and inkjet printing at Texas Christian University. One of her students was LexJet’s own Nolan Dowdy, who’s now Guy’s customer service specialist.

Inkjet printing multi-media fine art for an exhibit

Guy mixes traditional and digital media in much of her work, particularly her recent series call Re-Orient. Guy describes herself as “a collagist and a design anthropologist, if there were such a profession.”

In her Artist’s Statement about Re-Orient she writes: “The conceptual direction that I take in Re-Orient is to combine an inclusive collection of various historical patterns with self-originated elements.” To do so, Guy combines Photo Tex from LexJet, a repositionable adhesive-backed fabric, with screen printed and photographically mounted design elements and drawings that float off the wall about an inch or so.

Multi-media art exhibit using inkjet printing and wallpaper fabricThe primary backing image is printed on Photo Tex on a 24-inch Epson. Guy says she was previously producing the image on an adhesive-backed vinyl but prefers the look and repositionability of the Photo Tex for this artistic application.

“I’m having lots of fun with Photo Tex. It’s enabled me to do some large-scale things and make it more of a wall installation than I was able to do before,” says Guy.

Re-Orient is being shown at the Ro2 Art gallery in Dallas through Oct 22.