Walking in a Winter Wonderland!

Posted 21 Dec 2011

The summer of 2011 tiptoed past us like Inspector Clouseau, hopelessly skulking through the year in the hope no-one would notice it’s presence.

As it drew to a close and Autumn presented almost no change in the weather, our focus started to turn to the various outdoor ice rinks and winter events which we have a large role in producing graphics for.

This year we worked on three iconic London sites; Hampton Court Palace, Tower of London and Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland which hosts the largest outdoor rink in the country.

To put these events in place, the production company requires a huge amount of labour in a short period of time, a fact that comes down the line to suppliers such as us. For the events this year we took on six freelance installers and finishers to make sure we had a smooth production flow.

At the office Tom was connecting clients, designers and sponsor’s agencies together to make sure we received the artwork we needed at the right time. Gavin was able to manage the install on site permanently, liaising with the clients over the constant evolution of the build. Then our team of trusted finishers and installers made sure everything was mounted, trimmed and installed with care and precision accuracy, powered solely by pain au chocolat the size of your head.

Sponsoring the enormous rink at Hyde Park was Samsung Galaxy, who required branding across all aspects of the skating experience from collecting your skates through to leaving, catching your friends watching you at the same time. Here’s some of their requirements:

Ice rink internal advertising panels: These were produced on shatterproof clear 1mm polycarbonate, with reverse direct to media print on the back and a white flood coat.

Ice rink external graphics: These ran all the way around three sides of the rink and were either direct to media print on foamex, or satin laminated self adhesive vinyl. As a preventative measure to avoid damage to the graphics we also put a kicker panel of aluminium composite along the bottom of the external panels.

Inside the skate tent: We used the aluminium lined, non curling Kapamount 5mm foamboard to create arrow straight hanging panels. Counter fronts and skate rack ends were foamex panels, fixed using 3M VHB tape or screws with colour matched screw caps.

Elsewhere in Hyde Park we were commissioned to produce designs for text to go on wooden signs, to evoke the feeling of a German market. We added textures and effects to the typeface, then produced it on self adhesive vinyl and contour cut to shape. We applied these to varnished wooden boards, which were paired up with handwritten style cut vinyl on blackboards then all installed around various bars, food stalls and hot chocolate stands.

There were tons of additional side projects and specifications we worked on, the list could go on for ever. We ran well over half a kilometre of vinyl through our printer in a matter of days and a similar amount of direct to media print was produced. There were PVC banners, menu boards, cabin graphics, toilet signs, heras panels, ride signs, health and safety signs, warning banners, festival passes, guidebooks, map graphics, crowd control signs, barrier jackets, door graphics, slatwall header signs, finger post vinyl, window frosting, first aid signage… the list is endless!

So I’ll leave you with a gallery showing a small section of work we produced to browse through. And don’t forget to get on down to the Winter Wonderland, Tower of London or Hampton Court to check out our work! (or go ice skating)