with our and Cannes’ CSR values. Along with HP, our collective commitment to sustainable printing is clear to see through the many print creations at the festival.” Making a Statement Going even bigger and the ever-innovative Embrace Building Wraps has drawn widespread praise for a major job it carried out in London in collaboration with furniture store IKEA to promote the opening of its second small store in Central London. Embrace produced a large, printed wrap to cover scaffolding during works to transform the former Topshop location at Oxford Circus into a small IKEA store. While the sheer size of the wrap was impressive enough itself, the unique design is what has really helped to capture the attention of passers-by. The wrap was designed to look like a giant version of one of IKEA’s iconic FRAKTA blue bags. The installation comprised six fully engineered offset frames provided by Embrace. Five of these carry a silhouette line drawing of the building itself, complete with the Westminster City Council street nameplates in their original positions. The final banner section replicates the giant blue FRAKTA bag with three-dimensional handles. The project required 1,000 linear metres of scaffold tubes for the offset frames and uprights, and 2,400sq m of scaffold wraps, printed on PVC-free Kavalan Sunlight Weldable. In total, the wrap covered an area equivalent of 44 double-decker buses, while the bag handles measure up to 32m long and 1.8m wide. “We provided our full project management service from creative design for the building silhouette design, and on-site co-ordination with the main contractor McLaren to the print and install, and working closely with the scaffolding contractor TRAD,” says Greg Forster, managing director at Embrace. “We are especially delighted that the FRAKTA bag and handle really pops out and will get the conversation going both on and offline.” Moving back inside for our final project and SignLink was keen to pay tribute to this piece in particular as it showcases the power of combining more traditional print applications with modern technologies and techniques within the digital signage and display sector. Over in Toronto in Canada, sign-maker Minoh Inc used Drytac ReTac Textures Linen embossed film to produce a series of graphics that were integrated as part of a wider interior video wall display. Working with Marlin Spring, an integrated real estate company that acquires, develops, constructs, and repositions assets throughout North America, Minoh printed the graphics in-house on its HP Latex 365. The graphics were then installed around a series of screens inside the Marlin Spring office, with the screens cleverly overlapping wording without completely blocking the oversized text. Other aspects of the job included a graphic that listed all the key amenities in the area local to Marlin Spring’s latest real estate project in Toronto, helping to highlight what might be in store for those who opt to live in the region. “The customer was absolutely over the moon with the look of the graphics after they were installed on the walls,” says Minoh sales manager, Steven Mayers, who adds: “Such was the success of the job that the client will be looking to use this method again on other projects and we look forward to supporting them with future jobs. “The Minoh team was also incredibly impressed with Drytac ReTac Textures Linen as a product, and we will most certainly be using the material again in the future. It was incredibly easy to install and was great to work with, from start to finish.” We could easily go on and on talking about all the wonderful and innovative work that we have seen in the wide-format market over the past year – but we have to end the feature somewhere for fear of spilling over into the next page. However, fear not reader; SignLink is always happy to highlight the hard work carried out by wide-format printers and regularly showcases these projects across the pages of the magazine and on our website. Given how tricky it was to select just a handful of projects for inclusion here, one thing is most certainly for sure: the wide-format print market is not only alive and well; it is leading the way in terms of innovation in the signage and display sector. ▲ South Africa’s Prestige Signage produced colourful floor graphics to help a client celebrate Pride 2023 51 Issue 250 - December 2023 / January 2024 email: news@signlink.co.uk WIDE-FORMAT PRINT APPLICATIONS ▼ Toronto’s Minoh Inc was able to combine wall graphics and digital signage in this creative project Prestige Signage used its HP Latex 800W machine to print Pride-themed floor graphics for a customer 800w
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