The Butterfly Effect

Adults aren’t the only ones that can be influenced by out-of-home advertising. This hard-to-miss, eye-catching advertising medium can often be extremely successful in grabbing the attention of the youngest consumers.

For this reason, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County contracted LAgraphico to output graphics promoting the museum’s Pavilion of Wings butterfly exhibit to be installed in the children’s play area of the Westfield Mall near LA. The approach for this project was to immerse the play area in promotional graphics, which meant the installation of graphics on the base of the second-floor walkways and on several brick support beams and columns surrounding the playground. The Burbank, California-based print provider obtained the job through a longtime partnership with the Westfield Group, which operated hundreds of shopping centers around the world.

The graphics department at the museum created the files and then sent them to LAgraphico as PDFs. Working in InDesign, the shop’s premedia department color corrected the files, added bleeds where necessary, and prepared the files for final output. In addition to PDF proofs, the shop also sent the museum sectioned proofs printed with its Durst  Rho 350R using Durst Rho UV ink onto Flexcon  Busmark media.

Once approval was garnered from the museum, the shop began final output,
using the same printer, ink, and media. The wall graphics were printed on Flexcon Busmark 5800 top-coated vinyl film, while the graphics for the brick columns were printed on Flexcon Busmark 13-ounce billboard media. Because graphics were not allowed to be adhered to the brick columns, LAgraphico came up with an intriguing
solution: printing on non-adhesive billboard media and then attaching the graphics with a Velcro closure once wrapped around the columns. In all, the graphics totaled 1500 square feet, and printing took approximately two days.

Two LAgraphico employees completed the install in two sections—first the wall graphics and then the column graphics. Michael Griffin with LAgraphico says the installation was the most difficult part of the job due to the restrictions and challenges the shop faced regarding that part of the project. In addition to deciding to install the column graphics by using Velcro, the shop also had to carefully choose the specific media for the wall graphics. Since the surfaces where the graphics were applied had never been previously wrapped, LAgraphico had to decide the type of media that would be most successful on that surface without any prior knowledge of how the surface reacted to graphics. The most rewarding aspect of the job, says Griffin, was that the shop helped to make the play area more enjoyable for children. “It’s great for kids to see a beautiful, educational mural and not just blank walls.”

LAgraphico produces a range of wide-format applications, including window graphics, vehicle wraps, billboards, and point-of-purchase displays. The shop also offers temporary and permanent display solutions, lithographic printing, prepress services, and project-management solutions. LAgraphico prides itself on its green initiatives and is dedicated to providing services and solutions that are environmentally sustainable. In business since 1978, the company has 230 employees and operates out of an 80,000-square-foot facility.
 

LAgraphico
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