The next time you’re house or apartment hunting and an ad says “hardwood floors,” look twice. San Diego’s APE Wraps created this wood-grain floor graphic by digitally printing the pattern on Avery Dennison MPI 1005 Easy Apply RS with DOL 1060 overlaminate for a new set at St. Louis’s KTVI studio. terial you would use on a rigid floor. “One of the issues I see with a lot of them is that the overlaminate is so thin you could see everybody’s heel marks in it,” said Brunnett. “You spent all that money on a two- or three-day promotion, but instead of making your brand look good, it ends up hurting your brand, in my opinion. Choosing the right carpet graphic, considering how soft the surface is, makes a huge impact.” Carpet graphics are also not intended for the long term. “Carpet applications are typically a very, very short-term application the because the carpet is almost always impossible to get 100 percent clean,” said Heiob. “So your adhesive can contaminate it very easily and pull up very easily from people walking over it and catching an edge of it.” Actually, floor graphics in general tend to have short lifespans—on the order of 180 days or so. “The primary reason is how long the adhesive can handle pedestrian traffic,” said Brunnett. “It has to do with taking it off while the adhesive still performs the way it should.” There have been some new cases in which floor graphics are used not necessarily for promotion, but as a kind of interior décor. This is known as “full-coverage” floor graphics. One Avery Dennison customer used the company’s cast film to print a “wood” floor that was then applied to the floor of a TV studio. Floor applications “Full-coverage” floor graphics can be printed in one pass, but it is more practical to tile smaller images, such as this graphic for clothing retailer Carhartt, printed on FLEXcon substrates. can also be used to set apart different sections of a store like Sears, such as the fishing equipment aisle. “They used a full-coverage floor graphic so it covered every bit of the aisle and the end of the aisle,” said Brunnett. “It looked like it was painted on the floor to look like a riverbed. Now that area feels like it’s one section of the store immersing the customer in what they’re looking for.” Full-coverage floor graphics can also be tiled, which means that if one particular area gets scuffed or damaged, only one small tile needs to be reprinted and replaced, rather than the whole graphic. Still, printed floor graphics are not likely to be used for long-term interior décor any time soon. “Depending on the level of traffic that is going to be at a location, to replicate a hardwood floor would still be more of a temporary thing,” said Johnson. Floor graphic placement has also become more strategic, and indeed multiple variations of the same graphic can be used in different places within, say, a retail environment, starting at the front door, and then next to the product you specifically want to promote. “You catch them when they come in, drive them to a location in the store, and then influence that purchase right at the spot,” said Johnson. “You have to think about what your objective is.” Floor graphics are also becoming part of multichannel marketing campaigns. “Because of all the increase in digital marketing, people are starting to use floor graphics to partner with that,” said Johnson. “Maybe you’re using your social media to draw awareness to something, and then when you’re on-site you use a floor graphic or other type of application to really bring that in and drive more consistency.” Not unexpectedly, QR codes are now found on floor graphics and it’s not difficult to imagine a time when floor graphics will have Augmented Reality embedded in them. Given how many people these days walk through public locations staring at their phones, it’s a logical development. Effective—and safe—floor graphics are certainly within everyone’s reach, with a few basic best practices. “Make sure it works well for everybody,” said Johnson. “Make sure your messaging is concise, think about where you’re going to place it, and make sure you have good installation.” “Indemnification,” advised Brunnett. “Some providers offer them, some don’t. I would suggest anyone looking into floor graphics look into what an indemnification is and how it can protect their company as well as their customer.” Find this article at MyPRINTResource.com/12050208 Wide-Format I MyPRINTResource.com maging | July 2015 21
Wide-Format Imaging July 2015
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