Dry Erase Poster Lamination

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Jay Buckley
Dry erase poster lamination
Posters with Dry Erase Lamination

It’s great to have computer monitors to show your job schedules, but some manufacturing situations lend themselves to a lower tech solution. We use dry erase schedule boards in our shop, and find them to be a lot easier to interact with than a computer screen.

As you can see at the right, we write a job on the board when it’s ready to go into the finishing shop, and they wipe it off the board when it’s done. It’s a simple solution, and works great. Our graphic designers sit in front of a computer screen all day, so keeping their schedule on a spreadsheet works OK. The finishing shop? They are not computer guys.
Our gloss laminated posters do this very well. The dry erase marker comes off easily, and they are really easy to use. We keep a marker stuck on the wall with a velcro dot.
Every couple of months, the board starts to get a little gray. We find that we can wipe it with a solvent called Goof Off, available at most hardware stores. It will make it clean as a whistle- it will even remove regular magic marker from a gloss laminated poster.
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Honor the Mac Creator

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Jay Buckley
posters printed from mac files
A Mac in our Shop

The loss of Steve Jobs brings to mind the importance of the Mac computer he created to anyone in the graphic design field. His creativity and sense of style will be missed.

When MegaPrint Inc. was founded, we did it to bring large format printing to the PC user, since it was only available to Mac users back in 1994. As things went along, we added Macs to our repertoire, telling our customers that we’ll print your file however you created it.
So these days we are working on both platforms, and we’ll get you great results from either!
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Vinyl banner for a trade show booth graphic

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Jay Buckley
trade show banner
Trade Show Banner

Here’s how you transform an otherwise dumpy trade show space into something quite snazzy, and for a low cost! Our customer bought a matte vinyl banner and used supersnap hangers top and bottom to hold it straight. You can go from the sublime to the ridiculous when doing a trade show graphic, but I think this is one of the best presentations you can get for about $200. It’s professional, colorful, and smart.

Our rules for doing a trade show graphic affordably are to have something colorful to attract the eye, and six words or less that will interest your target customer. This trade show graphic does that very well.
Someone looking for what he sells knows that he does it professinally!
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Large format printing on canvas

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Jay Buckley
large format printing on canvas

Artwork Printed on Canvas

Here’s an inkjet print on canvas that I liked so much I have it hanging in my home. It has a great story.

In the late 50’s, an artist named Paul McCoy painted it while he was living in Spain. At some point, 35mm slides were taken of his paintings from this time, many of which have been subsequently lost, including this one. His wife asked me if the slides could be scanned and reproductions of the paintings made on canvas. She was kind enough to let me make one for myself.

Of the 30 or so slides, this and a few others were of high enough quality to give it a try, and with this one we succeeded. It is so realistic that the brush strokes have to be viewed from an angle to believe they are not three dimensional.  Aside from loving the painting, which is called “Huerta”, I think it gives a wonderful statement about what we can do with modern technology. What a pleasure to know that people can enjoy a canvas like this when it otherwise would have been lost.

Printing on canvas is about the same as printing on paper, it’s just a lot more expensive if it goes wrong!  We use UV stable inks so they will not fade, and do the printing on one of our newer 8 color machines to take advantage of their wide color gamut.

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Lamp Post Banners

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Jay Buckley
Boulevard banners for lamp post displays
Lamp Post Banner

A great way of telling people about what’s going on in your town is to put banners on the lamp posts. The picture on the right is in front of a church encouraging people to attend, but we’ve done them for colleges, music festivals, and many cities and towns.

The only problem is that people don’t know what to call them! We hear street light banner, boulevard banners, and many others. We call them lamp post banners and hope people find what they need.
We make them from our outdoor matte vinyl banner material, hemming the edges so they don’t fray in the wind. We put pole pockets top and bottom, and a grommet on one side so they can be fixed to the fixture that holds them- otherwise they can walk off the brackets in the wind.
We figure the life of these lamp post banners is three to five years before the sun and the weather start to make them look tired. And after all, after that much time, people will be bored of them anyway and it’s time to change the artwork!
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Big Presentation Checks

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Jay Buckley
Large checks for presentations
Presentation Checks

When you see people on TV or in the paper with a giant check, perhaps you wonder how to do that. Well, it’s one of the things we do quite a bit of.

Our big checks can come in either 18×36′ or 22×44″ size, and can either be paper on foamcore board, or we can laminate over the top with glossy plastic. When laminated, you can write on your large check with a dry erase marker,  and use them over and over.
There are several standard designs available, and when you order your big check, you simply choose which style and then enter the information you want printed on your large check.
Big checks are  a great way to get publicity for your company, since it’s pretty easy to take a digital picture of you and the presentation check and send it off to be published in your local newspaper.
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Direct Sign Printing on Sintra

Posted on September 22, 2011 by Jay Buckley
Sign printed with UV curable printer on sintra
Sign on Sintra

I went to a really nice event the weekend before last at the Mount Washington Observatory. We watched the sun go down from the highest point in the Northeast, champagne glass in hand. The weather co-operated with a crystal clear evening, and it was spectacular.

The high point for me, though, was seeing some of our work prominently displayed at the entrance to the museum. This sign was printed on sintra, which is a foamed PVC sheet, on our UV curable flatbed printer. It makes a durable sign with great colors, and it’s affordable.
You can send us a pdf, or a native file from any of the common design programs. Normal lead time for flatbed printing is a week, but we never lose a sign printing job over lead time! We can always find a way to meet your deadline.
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Printing accurate scale drawings

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Jay Buckley
To scale plans for a wooden ship model
John Reever and his plans

One of the things I want to do in my old age is to build a scale model of an old square rigged sailing ship from a set of original plans. John showed up the other day trying to dojust that, and we made several large prints from his scan of a letter size document. The tricky part was getting them exactly the right size, which Bob in our design department did a great job on.

When John talked about how he was going to turn his job plans into the actual wooden pieces, it sounded like a lot of work. I told him that we could take the same file we printed on paper and print directly onto wood with our flatbed UV curable printer, he was amazed. He had no idea this could be done. All he would need to do is cut the pieces out.
By printing directly on the 1/4″ wood sheets, we save John the time of cutting templates, marking the wood by hand, etc.
We’ll see- it’s a project that he expect to take him 3 or 4 years. We want a picture when it’s done!
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People Standups

Posted on September 10, 2011 by Jay Buckley
Cardboard cutouts of people
Lotsa Marinos!

I was browsing down memory lane this morning and ran across this photo from 2002. We had made 15 life size standups of Dan Marino for a chain of stores he was involved with. It’s a fun picture of Ken from our finishing shop (he’s still there!)  and all the standups.

There’s always a question about what to call these things. People often use the term “cardboard cutout” because that’s what you see of Elvis in the store at the beach. But in lower quantities, we print directly onto gatorboard with our flatbed printer, and cut them out by hand. Usually this is a less expensive way to do them for 20 or so pieces. Above that, we still print them the same way, and have them cut out with computerized routers. For more than 100 pieces, we start to think about screen printing and die cutting, which takes them out of our capability.

Our system is definitely the way to go for one or a dozen pieces, and we’ve done a lot of fun work with them. We’ve done sports celebrities, political candidates, and even the characters in a Broadway show. If you want to do a life size cutout for a trade shown or an event, give us a call!

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Auto Magnetic Signs

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Jay Buckley
Car Magnet Signs
Car Magnet

Here’s a great way to have (almost) free advertising all over town- put a magnetic sign for your business on your car. It’s easy to do, and everyone who sees your car gets an ad impression.

We use a nice heavy magnet that won’t come off in the car wash, and we round the corners so they don’t come to a point. When you change cars, the sign is easily changed to your new vehicle.
Best of all, they are affordable at $26 for a full color 12×24″ sign. If you want to do a big load of them, call for a discount.
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