By Melissa Donovan
Part 1 of 2
With web-based purchasing at an all-time high, brick-and-mortar stores use all means of advertising to get foot traffic in the door. Part of these efforts include eye-catching signage at point of sale or purchase.
Shopping centers or malls—indoor and outdoor—are environments that rely on visual sensory experiences to lure customers. Graphics are placed anywhere from the floor to the wall and the ceiling. Applications include banners, silicone edge graphics (SEG), window graphics, and floor decals.
Managing Quality
Based in Doral, FL, Binick Digital Imaging began in 2013 with two employees. Today the print service provider (PSP) operates out of a 5,200 square foot space with five total staff members. It offers print and installation services nationwide.
While the company serves many clients from multiple backgrounds, about 20 percent of its work is considered signage placed in malls or shopping centers. These jobs range from large volumes for nationwide rollouts to smaller volumes for one location. Sometimes projects require multiple SKUs and variable data.
According to Nick Castillo, co-founder/president, Binick, no matter the job—big or small—quality control is essential. “Managing quality control is something our company discusses everyday whether it’s our production, finishing, or quality control departments. We are meticulous with every project whether small or large.”
Part of quality control involves managing a brand’s color expectations. Retail-based signage is very color critical and needs to be matched across multiple locations as well as materials. At Binick, clients are asked to provide Pantone colors, samples are printed, and colors reviewed and signed off on prior to final production.
Common applications Binick creates for malls and shopping centers include wall murals, window graphics, barricade graphics, banners, static clings, and floor graphics.
The majority of these projects involve adhesive-backed materials, and Castillo and his team favor 3M Commercial Solutions. “They utilize the highest quality materials for flat or textured surfaces, making it easier for the installer. Also, they provide an advantage on the final appearance of your final product compared to competitors,” explains Castillo.
Complementing this material selection is the company’s portfolio of HP Inc. printers. These include the HP Latex 360, HP Latex 365, HP Latex 850, and HP Latex 3000. “Latex inks and sustainability are extremely important to our company and having 3M MCS ink warranty on all of our laminated prints with GREENGUARD certification really sets the bar for large format,” suggests Castillo.
The latex inks and HP printers enable Binick to meet a number of recent trends in mall or shopping center signage. First, window graphics, which are growing in popularity especially if a printer can offer white ink capabilities on an optically clear film. Another common application is SEG backlit fabric, which Castillo says is trending because it is extremely user friendly for the client to install.
Wallcoverings are another popular application used in retail centers. New materials enable full wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling coverage on just about any surface from brick to drywall. Binick recently completed a project that involved a large scale, 15-foot tall print designed with multiple layers of vector graphics.
Pani, a first time client, was searching for something completely outside of the box. Binick turned to 3M Envision Wrap Films to print a wall graphic applied to textured concrete. Additional elements included Avery Dennison Graphics Solutions DOL 6040 Sparkle Laminate and Nekoosa VinylEfx Metal Flake Gold. Letters were cut out of one-inch UltraBoard foam core from United Industries and painted around the edges. The project totaled 1,420 square feet of media.
Newest Options
Some of the trendiest media options are used in malls and shopping centers—both indoors and outdoors. The next article in this two-part series looks at another PSP who offers signage for these environments.
Click here to read part two of this exclusive online series, Quantifying Retail Signage.
Dec2019, Digital Output
