We do a lot of work for national retail chains and this is one of the jobs we recently completed. This job was for the Windsor dress store located at Brookfield Square Mall in Brookfield, Wisconsin.
When we do work for national chains, a good portion of the time they provide the printed material. An even larger number of times they ask us to produce the print. Many times when national chains work with a producer of vinyl prints, the producer is printing thousands of linear feet of vinyl to fill the retail chains needs. That also means that they print at very high rates of speed. High rates of speed also mean that you have to give up some quality. There is no way around that. We print at a slower speed so we are able to manage our print quality and ensure we are putting out near perfect prints. We also take the time to inspect our prints to make sure everything came out of the printer exactly the way it was supposed to. After inspecting the print, we laminate the print by pressing an optically clear, polylaminate under pressure, to the print. By laminating it, it protects the print and gives the print a wet paint look. It also minimizes the visibility of fingerprints.
The fun part came in when we went to install the print as the two cabinets that framed the area we were installing is weren’t square. They were so out of alignment that we had to use the bleed on the print to cover the extra area. We always add “bleed” to our prints because despite the best efforts to measure the area, you always can get a situation like this. The purple sparkly heart was added to the wall after we installed and heated the print. We aligned the heart using a laser level and a laser drop line. This creates a perfect level/square. This is how we can always make sure that everything is right.
Overall this was a pretty straight forward job with everything going as expected. The only hard part was getting to the mall at 6am because the install had to be done prior to the store opening. Talk about a day that required a bunch of coffee. If you happen to need one or two hundred wall graphics and it matters that your graphics look outstanding, please give Optimum Signs at call. We can be reached at 262.289.9481 or email us at info@optimumsignswi.com. We would love to help you with your project.
