NOT JUST ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL
Digital Imaging Services is making money from its creativity and project management as much as from print by producing stunning visual campaigns, such as this enormous brickwork vinyl and metal 'graffiti'.
"We go to client's and say 'Have you seen this?'," says founder Mark Bradley, who set up the Wolverhampton-based company in 1997 with a partner he has since bought out. "Like them, we need to evolve and that means getting the message out into the market that we can provide all sorts of creative solutions. We deal mainly with creative teams within agencies to get together campaigns with maximum impact. It's about having the knowledge of what your kit can handle and what substrates and inks can deliver, then it's all about using project skills as well as print skills to bring something different to the table. That's what we're always trying to do"
That's exactly what the company did in producing enormous brick wall vinyl installations for Manchester City Football Club to promote its game against Chelsea. Graphics were produced for right across the brickwork exterior of the Printworks development and Umbro Design Store in Manchester's city centre, plus a 60m long hoarding was produced for the stadium itself.
"We deal with Manchester City's agency Design By Music anyway, so they came to us saying they wanted something that would have massive impact," says Bradley. "We immediately said forget banners etc. and started to think about other options. We had used the Wall Wrap product from Hexis for smaller jobs before and could see how we could use it to produce something with a real wow factor on a job of this scale, so we put the idea forward and Music went with it."
Digital Imaging was intrinsically linked to the project from conception through to the de-rigging of the wall graphics, taking the weight of burden off the agency's shoulders.
"We actually went and measured up the wall spaces being used and then went and told the agency what dimensions the graphics needed to fit so that they didn't have any of the hassle of doing that. When we got the PDF of the graphic we then sorted out all the crossover and bleed requirements as the final image was made up of many graphic tiles. Our own team installed the prints over 48 hours, which was difficult because of the heights and scale of the job, not to mention the bad weather conditions, and the fact that you need certain temperatures etc for the vinyl to adhere properly so we were there with heat guns etc. When the graphics were due to come down about four weeks later, we handled all the de-rigging too," says Bradley.
The 10 x 10m vinyl banner of Shaun Wright Phillips was made up of over 120 individual different sections of 1350 x 1000mm pre-printed brick vinyls produced on Digital Imaging's Vutek QS3200 before being assembled and heat gunned onto the exterior of the Printworks to create the stunning graphical 'graffiti' pictured here.
The complexity of the project not only included the installation of the brick vinyl, but also the wrapping in vinyl of ducting, electrical installations and the production and installation of a printed steel panel that fit in with the overall design.
"What new substrates can deliver in terms of creativity is something we watch very closely," says Bradley. "We do quite a lot of work with suppliers in prototyping applications because we need to be able to offer something different. We have invested over ?120,000 in kit over the last 12 months to ensure we have the print capability. But print only accounts for about half the value of the job usually. There is a cost for creativity and the people we deal with know and understand that."