Whilst driving down Kentish Town Road today I noticed this new artwork above ‘Sam Widges’ (clever, eh?) sandwich and coffee shop. It stood out so much I felt I had to stop and take a photo! It appears to be a large piece which has been painted by respected urban artist Mr P who is part of the ATG London crew. Really nice to see some boring shop fronts given a full on makeover in this way, certainly livens up the high street!
Bold shopfront by Mr P of ATG London
Tags: ATG, Graffiti, Kentish Town, Kentish Town Road, Mr P, Sam Widges
Arnold Schwarzenegger is up in lights again with his old pals Sly and Bruce Willis in the current Hollywood box-office behemoth ‘The Expendables’, so whilst he’s made a come back, we’ve just run some tests on a new stock of blue back poster paper. This medium weight paper has been printed on using solvent inks, as such is waterproof, fade resistant and can be pasted up on a wall like a good old film billboard.
A speedy print coming off the HP solvent machine
This media represents fantastic value for money and gives posters a real helping hand to stand out from the crowd.
Tags: billboard posters, blue back posters, display graphics, large format posters, large format print, outdoor posters, poster printing, six sheet posters, solvent printing
It’s always nice when something a little bit different comes along and lands in our mailboxes. When we have the opportunity to apply some of our techniques and materials in a slightly more unusual way that also tests us and the application of our years of experience.
When illustrator Jason Devine contacted us he hadn’t used self adhesive vinyl before and wasn’t sure of the technicalities of using it. He wanted to achieve a layered effect for his ‘Utopia’ piece which was going to be displayed at the No Place Exhibition in August this year, originally by laying up several colours of vinyl on top of each other. As we worked through the project, we realised that aligning several layer of vinyl precisely was going to prove very difficult and not provide very much depth to the layers. To solve this we had several sheets of 2mm acrylic and a couple of 6mm sheets cut to size, we then cut and weeded the illustration and applied it to the various layers of acrylic. Once layered up, we sandwiched the 2mm sheets between the heavier 6mm sheets and applied a black flood of vinyl to the rear of one sheet. This created the illusion of depth, which gave the illustration a 3D effect as you walk around it.
The final piece really created a stir and provoked “…lots of questions on how it was made and the thought process…”. A success for all those concerned.
Further images and info from the exhibition will follow on once they’ve filtered through to us.
Acrylic sheet and self adhesive vinyl
Detail shot of the layered effect.
Self Adhesive vinyl cut and ready for application
Tags: acrylic, illustration, jason devine, self adhesive vinyl, vinyl, window graphics
Here’s a live action shot of the slick and efficient Sound installation team applying the finishing touches to a wall of lightblock graphics recently. We worked on these motivational images and quotes from the head honchos at this City based company in early August in time for their quarterly results. Due to what can only be described as a ‘compact’ timescale for this project, we printed 75 metres of vinyl during the day and late into the night, then laminated and trimmed the next morning, before installing that evening out of hours.
The lightblock vinyl means there’s no interference to appearance of the graphics from anything in the passageway behind these windows and gives a strong, bright base to print onto.
Graphic installation.
Tags: Graphic installation, installation, lightblock vinyl, matt laminate, vinyl, window graphics
Here’s a little shot of some vivid window graphics we’ve just produced using self cling film. It’s a 150 micron PVC film which adheres to super smooth surfaces like glass without glue or the cunning use of static. This means it’s repositionable, easy to put up and very well suited to short term window graphics. It’s designed to be printed on using solvent inks, which means it’s waterproof, fade resistant and overall pretty hard wearing plus takes the ink beautifully providing extremely vibrant colour and depth. It’s also available in clear if you want to reverse print and stick it on the inside of the window to be viewed from the outside.
Also, it’s machine cuttable, so we can produce graphics to whatever shape or size you want and profile cut them.
Machine cut window cling vinyl graphics
Window graphics on self cling (and Gavin's hair)
Tags: cling PVC, contour cut, outdoor graphics, profile cut, promotional graphics, self cling, solvent printing, window graphics
You would be excused for thinking House of Fraser are trying to muscle in on JD Wetherspoon, but the truth is that they should give more con-cider-ation to who they use for their outdoor posters!
I’m surprised they weren’t wineing about the state of these posters to whoever produced them, I know I’d be whingin‘ down the phone straight away!
Sound print should always be your first port of call, especially if your current printers are proving to be a champain in the a**e!
Tags: crop marks, house of fraser, poster printing
There’s nothing quite like the satisfaction of finishing a job well, here’s a boot full of work ready to be delivered to another delighted customer! Each roll is a full set of vinyl to sticker up a transit van, can you guess how many sets are in the boot? answers on a postcard to….
Boot full of work
Tags: cut vinyl, fleet graphics, transit van, van livery
Check out this Lego printer, I knew there had to be something useful you could do with it
Musical Typewriter
Another great T Shirt design from threadless.com
With The Wimbledon Tennis Championship starting last week, The Tennis Gallery in Wimbledon were looking to catch the eye of passing Pros and visitors alike from their location in SW19. They wanted a large, eye catching tennis ball graphic to be visible from the outside, yet still be able to see out of the window from the inside. The easiest way to achieve this is using contravision film which is a self adhesive window film with perforations to let the light through. You most commonly see this used over the back windows of buses.
Contravision film
The contravision film displays a strong image from the outside of the shop, but from the inside it’s black backing and stronger light outside mean you can see right through it, giving you a clear view of the world outside.
Contravision from the inside, it's amazing how much you can see through it.
The new window display not only enhances the outside of the shop. It also blocks some of the direct sunlight onto the art for sale and gallery items. I think we served up an ace!
The Tennis Gallery
Tags: contravision, perforated vinyl, solvent printing, window graphics