Rays Shine in Downtown Tampa

After years of strife, the Tampa Bay Rays clinched Major League Baseball's American League East title this fall and brought sweet victory home to Tampa. Because the entire staff at print provider OAI in Tampa considers themselves fans, the shop moved hastily to assemble the city’s celebratory decorations. “At OAI, we are all Rays fans and we are excited our team won the American League East title,” says Jessica Blevins, OAI’s print production manager, “so we worked over the weekend to produce the banners for the city and fans to enjoy.” The shop set out to produce two banners for Tampa’s downtown Colonial Bank building, large enough for the whole city to see.

Graphics were prepared in Photoshop and supplied by the Rays, which is a longtime client of OAI’s. Using its two EFI Vutek 5330s, the shop printed more than 5000 square feet of graphics in all-comprising eight 16-foot-wide panels-within a print time of four hours. The end result was one banner measuring 60 x 40 feet and another measuring 63 x 45 feet. In addition, all of the edges received webbing and grommets and the corners were reinforced with extra vinyl and double stitching. Finishing, which included the use of a Union Special chain stitch machine, tacked on another four hours. Installation took a five-person crew 12 hours total, and was handled out-of-house by J.O. DeLotto and Sons, also in Tampa.

The art for this job was received on Saturday morning and the banners were ready for install on Monday morning. When referring to the quick turnaround marketing manager Jamie Songy says, “It was important for the franchise, it was important to the team, it was important to us, that when downtown residents arrived that they’d see this.”

The Client
The Tampa Bay Rays MLB Baseball team

The Players
OAI (www.oaicorp.com), J.O. DeLotto and Sons (www.delotto.com)

Tools & Supplies
EFI Vutek 5330, Triangle Digital inks, 13-oz. Gomagic vinyl, Union Special chain stitch sewing machine.