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Custom Printed Wallpaper Installation

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Jay Buckley

Installing Custom Printed Wallpaper

We installed some of our custom printed wallpaper the other day in our office. It was a great experience for the guys in the vinyl department to do an installation.

We used a picture I took last spring at Tuckerman Ravine on Mount Washington. People hike about 3.5 miles with their skis on their backs and ski down an extremely steep headwall. It’s great fun to ski it, and fun to watch everone else too.

I’ve wallpapered a lot of bathrooms and kitchens, and putting this paper up is not much different. The paper is not pre-pasted, so you need to brush on paste before you put it up. The other difference is that you overlap the paper by an inch, and then cut through both layers of the paper to give a clean, edge-to-edge joint.

The custom printed wallpaper went up pretty fast, in about an hour for two panels 4×8 feet.

The other great thing is that we have a terrific looking mural in our office, made from a photo that originally was 2112 x 2816 pixels. We resampled it up to 72 dpi in the final size, and of course cropped it to square. We dropped in some type to let people know it’s Tuckerman. This means that you can take a pretty standard digital picture and get great results from our process! I used an ordinary 6 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera.

Custom Printed Wallpaper

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Jay Buckley

: Custom Printed Wallpaper

Sometimes when people tell me they want to put a big picture on the wall, I ask them “How about making the wall a big picture?” One of the coolest ways to use our solvent banner printers is to make custom printed wallpaper.

In this photo, our customer used custom printed wallpaper to decorate a marketing room. The photos we printed on the wallpaper are historical pictures of the company. It makes a great presentation, and they tell us that customers going into the room find it interesting and fun.

Custom printed wallpaper allows you to put really big pictures up that are permanent and durable. We see them going into restaurants, corporate lobbies, even schools.

Posted in Custom Printed Wallpaper | Tagged custom printed wallpaper, wallpaper graphics, wallpaper murals | Comments Off

Electronic Billboards, Yikes!

Posted on January 12, 2010 by Jay Buckley

Electonic Vinyl Banners?

I was getting a tank of gas in Pennsylvania over the Holidays, and snapped this picture of an electronic billboard. It set me to wondering how long before this kind of thing completely replaces the vinyl banner business.

Most billboards are printed on grand format high speed inkjet printers. The machines are 16 feet wide, and many are made right here in Meredith NH at EFI Vutek. But I digress.

The real question to me is when will we see something like this in the smaller end of the market. It will need to be portable, durable, and cheap. Still, it seems to me that those of us in the banner business need to be watching this for it’s impact on our business. Some day someone will have a vinyl banner that plugs into your laptop and you can hang it up at the football game to encourage your team, and then change the graphics and give it to your kids to carry in the parade. Here’s hoping I can get to retirement age before it happens!

Posted in Vinyl Banners | Tagged billboards, electronic banners, Vinyl Banners | Comments Off

Vinyl Banners in Retail Stores

Posted on January 8, 2010 by Jay Buckley

Vinyl Banners in a Spa Store

Here’s a great use of vinyl banners- in a store that sells hot tubs and spas. These are matte vinyl banners, so they don’t give reflection trouble with bright lighting. Because they are made for outdoor use, they are fine in the high humidity environment of a spa store. They also add a lot of jazz and color to the store for not a lot of money.

These vinyl banners are hung using pole pockets top and bottom. That gives them a smooth edge at the top, instead of the droop that can happen between grommets. A pole pocket on the bottom has a small dowel that has just enough weight to keep the banner straight.

Posted in Vinyl Banners | Tagged outdoor banners, retail displays, Vinyl Banners | Leave a comment

Replacing Graphics in Banner Stands

Posted on January 7, 2010 by Jay Buckley

Replacement Banner

Back in the room full of marketing junk are a couple of banner stands that your predecessor bought. You wonder how hard it might be to have the graphics replaced. We can do that!

Pictured at the right is a replacement banner in a stand they had laying around at the Mount Washington Hotel. In this case it was an Expand banner stand, but all of them operate similarly, and replacing the graphics is easily done. Generally you will need to send us the stand, although our premium banner stand is designed to replace the graphic without returning the stand to us.

A typical banner stand runs $500-600 new, but a replacement banner is about half that. So it makes good sense to replace the graphic if the mechanism is in good shape. If there are problems with the mechanism, we’ll let you know.

There are more and more economy stands out there, and often replacement of those graphics is nearly as expensive as buying a new one. The economy stands are not terribly durable, so our advice is to only think about replacing graphics in them once or twice.

By the way, if you get up this way, stop by and see us. We’re proud of our state-of-the-art facility, and would love to show it to you. Think about staying, or dining, at the Mount Washington too. It’s a real piece of history, and quite elegant!

Posted in Banner Stands, Poster Printing | Tagged banner stand, replacement graphics, retractable banners, roll up banners | Comments Off

Banner Stands for Multi-Language Use

Posted on January 6, 2010 by Jay Buckley

Here’s a great way to use a set of three banner stands for trade shows when you are going to countries that use different languages. What we designed for our customer Shielding Dynamics was a 3 banner stand display, with all the language on the second two stands. This way, they bought five banners but only three premium banner stands, and are able to have trade shows graphics in both English and Spanish.

They did a show in Venezuala one week, grabbed the banner stands at the end of the show and flew to Chicago for another. Everything went off without a hitch. Changing out graphics on our premium banner stand takes just a minute. All they needed to do was exchange the Spanish graphics on panels 2 & 3 with the English ones, and let the show begin!

Also notice on this display that they used a 48″ banner stand in the center with 36″ banner stands on either end. This gave them a trade show backdrop a full 10 feet wide.

Posted in Banner Stands | Tagged Banner Stands, trade show backdrop, trade show booth, trade show displays | Comments Off

Banner Stands in a Hurry

Posted on January 5, 2010 by Jay Buckley

Here’s a job we did recently where the customer was really in a hurry. They needed the banner stands for a trade show the next day. It happens a lot, it seems, in this last minute society we live in.

Banner Stands

Fortunately, we had plenty of the hardware and banner film in stock. We had files early in the day, printed four banners and installed them on the retractable banner stands, and shipped them off to the trade show. Naturally, they were relieved! A trade show is a terrible thing to waste.

We usually keep a dozen economy banner stands, and half a dozen premium ones in stock. While we suggest you give us a few days to produce your graphics, we are almost always able to get a rush job out for you.

Posted in Banner Stands | Tagged Banner Stands, retractable banners, roll up banners, trade show displays | Comments Off

Big Banner Stands

Posted on January 2, 2010 by Jay Buckley

: Wide Banner Stand

Banner stands are now available in wider sizes, and that gives you more flexibility in creating trade show graphics and retail signs. Sometimes, the 36″ width limitatiion just didn’t work. Now, you have choices.

Here’s a 48″ nominal width banner stand (actual 47-1/4″ graphic width). They are actually available up to 60″ nominal width. If you are trying to create a trade show backdrop, they allow you to do it with two banner stands instead of three.

That can be a real help in doing the layout, since you really don’t want to have your text jumping the break between banner stands. Having two pieces to carry into the show is a bonus too.

We’ve also seen a case where our customer used a wide banner stand in the middle of two 36″ stands to make his display a full 10 feet wide.

We stock the 48″ stand, the 60″ stands are special order and take about a week to get here.

Posted in Banner Stands | Tagged Banner Stands, retractable banners, roll up banners, trade show graphics | Comments Off

Banner Stands that Curl

Posted on January 1, 2010 by Jay Buckley

You see banner stands from time to time where the banner curls at the edges. This happens because the banner is printed on vinyl. When installed on a banner stand, the vinyl stretches causing the edges to curl towards the center. We call it “canoeing” because the shape of the banner looks like the sides of a canoe. It makes the graphics hard to read, and sure spoils the presentation of a banner stand.

We solve this problem by using a polyester film on our banner stands. Since it doesn’t stretch, the banner stays flat. We’ve had one up in our shop for over two years, and it’s still flat as can be.

We have two choices of polyester banner film. On our economy stand we use a 7 mil budget film. It does a nice job at a great price. On our premium stands, we use an 11 mil film with a light blocking layer. The heavier film is more durable, and you won’t see the shadow of the pole if the banner stand is in front of bright light (like against a window).

Either way, the problem of curling is solved with polyester film. It’s the right material for use on banner stands. Don’t let anybody tell you they are saving you money by using vinyl!

Posted in Banner Stands, Vinyl Banners | Tagged Banner Stands, retractable banners, roll up banners, Vinyl Banners | Leave a comment

Banner Stands as a Trade Show Backdrop

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Jay Buckley

Here’s something we are seeing more and more- people using three banner stands as a trade show backdrop. It make sense! The up front costs are lower, shipping costs are lower, and the presentation is terrific.

First of all, it’s a piece of cake to ship to the show. You can send it yourself at your hotel, and then carry the stands into the show hall. No fees to receive them, no cartage fees to bring them to your booth.

The real savings come when you produce or change the graphics. The three banner stands will set you back less than $1500, about half of what a booth costs . You can replace the graphics for about $250 each, or $750 for a complete set. That’s also about half the cost of a set of replacement panels for a pop-up booth.

The whole thing can be put together in a few minutes, a real blessing if you are setting up at the last minute. Another suggestion is to rent a small table or podium for your literature and or product samples. Then you have nothing to ship home except the banner stands!

Posted in Poster Printing | Tagged Banner Stands, trade show backdrop, trade show booth | Comments Off