When the Mall of America decided to rebrand itself to “Nickelodeon Universe” in 2008, Vee Corp. was chosen to produce most of the décor. Vee partnered with wide-format print provider Big Image Systems in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, to create grand displays of various Nickelodeon characters that would hang from large ceiling columns in the mall’s atrium. The graphics can be seen from four different levels, and the lighting changes from all-natural light through the glass ceiling during the day to artificial light at night. Characters consisted of SpongeBob SquarePants, Jimmy Neutron, Dora the Explorer, and others.
Big Image Systems was provided with image files that it then transformed into 38 large cylinders between 39 x 10 feet and 28 x 5.5 feet, for a total of 8200 square feet produced in two weeks. There were 10 total pieces to the project, each consisting of two or three sections. The company used its 10-foot Durst Rho 350 UV printer with Caldera RIP and UV inks to direct print onto Heytex Stoplight fabric. Big Image chose this particular fabric because of the opacity needed for the challenging lighting conditions.
“This project was challenging due to a tight time schedule of two weeks,” says Olle Lindqvist, president of Big Image Systems. “Nickelodeon wanted to keep the time the park had to be closed to a minimum, and the graphics had to be installed first. With 40 million annual visitors to the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, the graphics have so far been seen by about 60 million people, so this certainly was a very high-
visibility project.”