MegaPrint/Owls Head Transportation Museum MegaPrint produced a 26 x 15-foot wall mural for the Owls Head Transportation Museum in Owls Head, ME. The actual race car featured in the mural appears in front of it. ICL Imaging /Higgins Armory Museum Cutout images printed by ICL Imaging for Worcester, MA’s Higgins Armory Museum. trade show graphics. As it was for MegaPrint, serving museums seemed like a logical extension. “It was just one of these things where we went to a museum, and a museum found us, and at the time, a lot of them wanted backlit graphics,” said Bill Smith, director of sales and marketing for ICL Imaging. “We were one of the few who did it at the time.” One of ICL Imaging’s first major projects was for the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston circa 1987–88, which comprised several 16- by 20-foot backlit panels. “We printed them in long strips on black-andwhite Mylar material backlit by fluorescent lights,” said Smith. “One thing led to another, and we started doing more work with local museums.” Some of the museums with which ICL Imaging works include the Worcester Art Museum, the Berkshire Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, the USS Constitution Museum, and even the venerable Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. ICL Imaging also found that producing museum graphics is not appreciably different from trade show graphics. “With trade show graphics, you’re doing oneoffs of the best quality you can for someone to go to a show and present their best image,” he said. “It’s the same thing with museum graphics. You’re doing onesies and they have to be the best thing you do.” Still, there are some unique differences. “You’re dealing with a lot of variations in hanging and displaying, more so than trade shows. Museums are a bit custom, it’s making a lot of different things to fit into the environment.” Installation is also a major component when working with museums, and ICL Imaging avails itself of its own as well as third-party installers. Again, museums pose some unique installation challenges compared to trade shows. “You’re in a public environment so you usually have to be there in the evening or off-hours to do installations,” said Smith. “You have to be very careful because you’ve got lots of different museum pieces around you. You’re not in a trade show hall where you’ve got forklifts running around and if you drop something it doesn’t matter.” Buckley and MegaPrint have also found some unique challenges working with museums. “You’re working with old stuff,” he said. “You don’t always have a nice, new 18-megapixel picture. They’ve got old photographs, they’re damaged, they’ll scan them in, and we have to clean them up.” And although major museums work with high-end professional design firms that specialize in creating displays for museums, most small museums don’t have the resources to draw on those kinds of services. Many are also dependent on volunteers, who can have widely varying degrees of graphic design ability. So MegaPrint found that offering graphic design services really helps out a lot of their customers. “We have beautifully designed stuff that comes in, and some other stuff that you really have to work to get something that’s going to work well for them,” said Buckley. “That’s what we do. We work together to try to make it right.” Although a majority of museum displays are pretty standard—photos and artwork with descriptive text—there are trends that ebb and flow in museum graphics, and the latest are a function of the capabilities of the current generation of printing equipment. “Being able to print directly onto materials now with the flatbed machines is certainly a new trend,” said Smith. “We’re able to print on a variety of different materials, so we can print an image on wood and have the grain show through—or not— and add different effects.” Both Smith and Buckley have seen demand for wallpaper expanding. “We’re starting to see a lot of wallpaper, whether it’s to set the tone in a room or just make a big display,” said Buckley. “Wallpaper is a growing trend because we can do a lot of custom wallpapers,” said Smith. Different textures are also in hot demand—and being able to print Continued on page 25 Wide-Format I MyPRINTResource.com maging | July 2015 23
Wide-Format Imaging July 2015
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