Partition Vinyls - Client: Iris Associates
David Wood, director of Iris Associates (Sheffield based Design Agency) wanted to produce something a little different to apply to his new glass partitions. Something that wasn’t just a poster or a logo, something that would be eye catching yet subtle!
Scribble Room
The designers at Iris got to work on creating graphics for the ‘Scribble Room’ and the ‘Ideas Room’ and came up with a great concept which we at Display Link needed to produce and install. One partition had a pencil graphic (for the scribble room) and the other had light bulb graphics (for the ideas room). It was decided that the best route forward would be to produce the graphics out of self adhesive vinyls.
Ideas Room
This meant no large format print would be required on this occasion, just coloured vinyl chosen from a swatch that we would machine cut using our 60 inch wide vinyl cutter. There are a large spectrum of colours and finishes to choose from when producing vinyl and some unusual ones too such as illuminous, etched, ‘twinkly’, translucent and more.
With this project we only needed black, red and yellow to create what Iris Associates required. The other advantage in using vinyls is that when it is applied to a glass partition it works from both sides and as David pointed out it also prevents people walking into the glass; we’ve all seen a member of the family walk into patio doors!
So with the production decisions made we were still left with a bit of a challenge! The design required very thin lines to be cut (swirly pencil) so would the machine handle it? and would the alignment form one drop to the other be acceptable? Could we successfully weed out the surplus vinyl without accidently destroying any of the required vinyl? … well as it happens all of this went to plan without the slightest problem.
Finally how would we apply such an intricate design to the glass?
When we produce vinyls at Display Link we stick application tape to the face of the cut out vinyl. Application tape is like a big sheet of masking tape which when stuck to the vinyl face can be used to pull the vinyl graphics away from the release paper.
Pencil Graphics
So firstly we lifted the graphics away from the release paper and turned the tape and vinyl over, sticky side up. On this occasion the trick was to apply the pencil graphics using soapy water! In a way its a similar process to wallpapering. We sprayed the sticky side of the graphics with soapy water and the glass with soapy water and placed in position. The soap allowed us to slide the graphic around to the exact position required. Next we simply squeegeed as much water out as we could. Once that was done we simply left it to dry and then removed the application tape the next day leaving the graphics in position.
Wet install using appication tape.
Finishing touch!
Light bulb graphics
Applying the light bulbs was a totally different process to the wet application. This was done using a dry method. Firstly we position the cable graphics by stretching them to get them nice and straight and then we squeegeed the light bulbs on to the glass. On this occasion the application tape could be removed straight away as no water drying was required.
Fitting staight light cable
Close up
David Wood was extremely pleased with the project “The results were fantastic and it was just as i’d imagined. It was all completed in time for an important meeting we had got coming up so I was delighted”.
Our special thanks to David and the team at Iris Associates.
Tags: application, install, self adhesive vinyl, vinyl
