The ABCs of Creating Back to School Safety Graphics

As school bells start ringing and “First Day of School” photos start hitting social media, that can only mean one thing: school is back in session. With many school districts offering in-person teaching, e-learning, and a hybrid of both, there are questions about how to keep students informed of health and safety requirements as they return to class.

To sort through all the information and to discuss the tools and resources available, we brought together two teams of specialists: one for print service providers, offering additional product and application advice, and one for educators who have limited experience with large format printing.

For educators and faculty members, Canon Technical Analyst Pete Wright and LexJet Application Expert Michael Clementi join us to provide some guidance to teachers and educational staff who may be working with large format printers for the first time as school districts consider bringing printing in-house rather than outsourcing graphics.

Clementi and Wright discuss how easy it is to work with the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-Series 2100  and PosterArtist Lite, the free software that comes with the printer and they offer some suggestions for versatile media that can be used throughout the school for a variety of indoor and outdoor signage.

For PSPs, we sit down with LexJet Senior Account Executive, Ramiro Torrez, and Large Format Output Specialist, Nolan Dowdy, to discuss some of the applications and products that are available to help supply schools with health and safety signage for the upcoming school year.

When it comes to messaging in schools, consistency and location is the key. Reinforcing the everchanging guidelines put in place by the school, county, or state means that there could be the need for the quick and easy turnaround to get updated graphics installed.

For an in-house school print shop, some of the versatile and easy-to-install products that are compatible with the Canon printer include LexJet Print-N-Stick Fabric for floor graphics, LexJet 8 mil Production Satin Photo Paper for posters, and LexJet TOUGHcoat Thrifty Banner and Banner Ups for banners. For PSPs, offering the right solution for the right location is paramount to helping keep the students and faculty safe.

The approaches of educators and PSPs might be a little different, but the end goal of keeping students safe and healthy is the same. You can learn more about their efforts by clicking HERE. If you have additional questions, you can also reach out to one of our specialists at 800-453-9538 or visit LexJet.com.

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.