Congratulations to the first, second, and third place winners of this year’s application of the year awards! Work from Art City Wraps, Premier Graphics Inc., and Sport Graphics all showcased some of the more creative installs we’ve seen in the past 12 months. With so many impressive stories, we had to include an honorable mention in this year’s contest.
Business Expansion is Good
Creative Silhouettes of Vaughan, ON, Canada began in 2012 and today operates out of one location with 6,000 square feet of space and seven employees. The company offers a variety of services relating to large format printing, indoor and outdoor signage, and vehicle wraps. This includes graphic design work, production, and installation.
The Donnelly Group in Vancouver awarded Creative Silhouettes with the job of creating outdoor wall graphics for Hobo Cannabis Company in April 2020. It printed and installed these graphics for ten new stores in just seven days, which averaged out to about one and a half days per location. This project earned the company honorable mention in the 2021 Application of the Year awards.
Drytac Polar Grip material was chosen for the job. “We find it easy to work with when installing outdoors on rough/brick surfaces. It was important for us to use something that we were familiar with and use regularly while also offering the most durability,” explains Leidy Martinez, sales/customer specialist, Creative Silhouettes.
Each retail space consisted of different exterior surfaces—brick, stucco, painted wood, and rusted metal, so Creative Silhouettes required a vinyl product that could work on all of them—offering consistency across all ten locations. Drytac Polar Grip was up to the task.
Drytac Polar Grip is a polymeric self-adhesive PVC film is rated for up to five years. The high bond adhesive of Polar Grip means graphics can be permanently applied to any surface, such as metal, plastic, wood, glass, and brick using a premium vinyl with trusted performance.
The imagery was printed using a 64-inch HP Inc. Latex R1000 printer with HP Latex Ink. The printer features a maximum media thickness of two inches and is equipped with three-liter ink cartridges—both color and white. Indoor production is rated at 301 square feet per hour. Part of why this device was selected over others was because of its ability to print high-resolution files quickly without compromising on quality.
With ten locations’ worth of graphics needing to be printed and installed in seven days, additional challenges were not as daunting, but they did exist. The fact that this was an exterior install was one of them.
“Installing outdoors always offers challenges because you have to pay attention to minor details and take time to ensure that the material properly adheres to the surface. The last thing we want is for a client to come back to us and let us know the material is peeling prematurely,” says Martinez.
Hobo Cannabis Company was very happy with the final outcome at all ten locations and when it was time to update the design, it worked with Creative Silhouettes again.
Rounding Out the Wins
Thinking about why this application in particular was nominated for the Application of the Year contest, Martinez states that is a good representation of the company’s versatility as well as commitment to accomplishing things correctly.
“The application surface was both glass and brick and it came out smoothly. It is very important to be able to work with individual materials because every day is something different in our field. Quality in a service or product isn’t about what you put into it. It’s about what your clients get out of it and our client received VIP service from beginning to end.”
Congrats again to all of this year’s winners! We enjoyed learning more about each winning projects. If you’d like to participate in the 2022 contest, be sure to check out our social media channels and email newsletters in Spring 2022 for more information on when nominations open.
Aug2021, Digital Output
