Give Custom Walls Personality with the Right Wallcovering Product

Gone are the days of choosing from a few wallpaper options that may ­– or may not – match your style and personality. Creating custom artwork for your home or office is one of the new trends for wall décor. From kids’ rooms to board rooms, we’ve rounded up a variety of solutions that are tailor-made for you.

Check out some of the ways our customers added personality and life to their wall mural projects:

Wall Murals That Go with the Flo: If you are doing a project that will be displayed for a few months or several years, LexJet Simple Flo Wrap Vinyl, with its air-egress liner and repositionable adhesive, makes installation a breeze. When John Toth from Triad Creative Group was tasked with bringing the past to the present, he opted for Simple Flo – laminated with LexJet Simple Flo Wrap Gloss UV Laminate (2.4 Mil). For this project, some of the murals were displayed on different substrates, including primed MDF and Sintra, while others were applied directly to the display walls. Toth knew that the applications would be bubble-free due to the air-egress liner and that the repositionable adhesive would allow him to fix any misaligned panels during installation. The wide color gamut of the Simple Flo contributed to the authenticity of the project by bringing out subtle nuances in the historical images.

Print-N-Stick Fabric and the Frozen Tundra of Lambeau Field

Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame Exhibit Triad Creative Group

Triad Creative Group recently completed a Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame exhibit called Touchdown! for the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay, Wis. So I asked Triad’s project manager, John Toth, a rhetorical (or stupid; you make the call) question: “So… Are you a Packers’ fan?” There was a pause, a chuckle, and, “Absolutely!”

Knowing that Triad Creative Group is located in nearby Brookfield, I should have known better. Still, it had to be asked, because being a fan would make the project that much sweeter, and it was.

Photo Mural Triad Creative GroupHowever, it wasn’t easy. Perhaps the most difficult and time-consuming aspect of the project was typing in the names of each and every Packer Hall of Famer, then adjusting their individual hand-sketched portraits that would ring the walls surrounding the trophy case.

It’s a temporary exhibit at the museum that runs through Feb. 28, 2015, but it doesn’t look temporary, thanks to the work of Triad Creative Group, which also builds custom structures for exhibits and trade shows through its division Rent-Ex. The look of permanence was important to Toth, from the structures surrounding the exhibits to the graphics applied to them.

Triad Creative Group Exhibit“It was challenging in that they didn’t have a large budget, and we came up with the best way to represent the exhibit with the budget they had. We built those walls so they could use them again for different applications,” explains Toth. “And, with the Print-N-Stick Fabric from LexJet they can pull off the graphics without damaging the surface and use the walls for whatever they want. Without the Print-N-Stick material it just wouldn’t work.”

Toth says they use Print-N-Stick Fabric almost exclusively for their booth rental business because the graphics can be easily peeled off, rolled back up on the release liner and the customer can store and re-use them as needed.

Green Bay Packer Trophy Case Triad Creative Group“It’s a win-win-win all the way down the line. It’s a wonderful product. It goes down very easily; it’s extremely forgiving. If it sticks to itself it’s very easy to get it off. I show it to clients and wad it up in my hands, pull it back apart and stick it back up. You’ll be darned if you can find a crease in it; it’s amazing,” says Toth. “The imaging quality is absolutely fantastic. We’ve done everything from product shots to the faces in the Hall of Fame exhibit that were hand sketched. Everything, including the small copy, was crisp and legible. We use the HP Latex Printer. It doesn’t require a laminate, so there are increased savings and value there. And, it’s very easy to trim.”

For the Hall of Fame exhibit they wrapped each 24-foot-long wall section in Green Bay green with the sketches and info about each Hall of Famer on Print-N-Stick Fabric. Black-and-white photo murals of classic Packer football moments were added to the inside curved corners of the wall facing the main displays. Triad Creative Group also built the trophy case, complete with motion sensors to prevent potential theft of the priceless NFL championship and Super Bowl trophies housed inside.

“The photo murals are 4′ x 9′ feet and even with the curve of the wall they went down in one fell swoop; we had them down in ten minutes,” says Toth. “With the exposure this gets the images have to look high-quality, and they looked fantastic when they were finished.”

LexJet Inkjet Media Profiled and Ready to Roll for HP Latex Printers

LexJet at HP Latex Academy

In addition to the valuable knowledge and training LexJet customer specialists received at HP Latex Academy, which we covered at the LexJet Blog last week, HP was able to test and profile a variety of LexJet inkjet media for its lineup of Latex printers: the L25500, Latex 210, Latex 260 and Latex 280.

The first round of new profiles is now available and ready for download at LexJet’s ICC Profile page. Go to www.lexjet.com/Profiles.aspx (or click on that link), then click on HP Printers and HP L26500 (the new profiles here will also work of the other HP Latex Printers), and select either Onyx Profiles or Caldera Profiles based on your RIP platform.

The LexJet inkjet media that’s been profiled and added includes…

  • LexJet Clear PreLume HD (for ONYX)
  • LexJet Print-N-Stick Fabric (ONYX)
  • LexJet Simple Window Perf (ONYX)
  • LexJet Absolute Backlit (Caldera)
  • LexJet TOUGHcoat Water-Resistant Polypropylene (Caldera)
  • Fredrix 901SJ Select Matte Canvas (Caldera)

These are in addition to a number of other profiles for LexJet media available for HP Latex Printers. Be sure to check back at the Profiles page for more coming down the pike in the coming weeks.

One LexJet inkjet material you ought to check out for Latex printing is LexJet Clear PreLume HD, which is receiving rave reviews for the output you can achieve with it.

“I was pleasantly surprised at how well it printed on the Latex printer. There were no issues with posterization and it has great saturation. I’ve been able to switch the printing of LexJet Clear from our aqueous printer to the Latex, and I’m quite pleased about it since LexJet Clear has been one of our standard materials for the past 15 years or so,” says John Toth of Triad Creative Group, Brookfield, Wis.

If you have any questions, or need any help, contact a LexJet customer specialist at 800-453-9538.

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.