Making Your Advertising Stick

A GREAT idea for clients looking for something a bit different for trade shows. I've thought about backdrops, table tops, and but why not something that passerbys would like to sit down on! A perfect example of a highly visible object in a high traffic area! You can purchase this chair and we can design and print the custom graphics for it!
~Amy Donahue
Signage Consultant

Making Your Advertising Stick
Graphic printers are constantly on the lookout for new products that will make potential clients stop and engage in a brand or logo for longer than a perfunctory glance. It’s why one company recently jumped at the chance to be one of the only known suppliers for a promotional graphics chair in the United States.

Popular in parts of Europe and Asia, vinyl-wrapped chairs encourage consumers to rest and take a longer look at a particular advertisement. The US supplier’s principal said he spent a good 20 minutes examining a digitally printed chair the first time he saw it in Europe.

The wrapped, promotional chairs are made of polypropylene and designed as smooth and bendable as a couch. The US distributor of the chairs notes that printing shops do not print directly onto the chairs. Instead, they print on vinyl, over-laminate the vinyl and stick it on the chair as they would with a vehicle.

Areas well-suited for the chairs include:

* Trade-show booths
* Conventions/seminars
* Corporate lobby/waiting areas
* Retail point-of-purchase
* Special events (such as promoting an upcoming exhibit at a museum)
* Daycare centers/play areas

The biggest market to latch onto the chairs has been the trade-show industry, suppliers say. Digitally printed chairs have been a hit for trade show booths, both as seats for people working in the booths and reinforcements of a particular brand or logo.

For companies that want to change out their advertising, suppliers advise them to use removable vinyl or apply graphics on portions of the chair.

A blank, large chair at 81 cm (32 inches) high with the carrying case costs roughly $190 (the chairs also come in small and medium). The US supplier plans to soon release a starter kit that includes a set of chairs, table and child’s chair, giving customers all the staples they would need to set up a promotional sitting area.

Additionally, the chairs feature a couch kit accessory that can help turn several chairs into a long couch or tower. And while there is no official weight capacity, suppliers say the chairs can comfortably handle up to 350 pounds without collapsing. With posters and signs becoming normal fare in the advertising world, chairs serve as a new venue for marketers to promote their message.

All else 'wrappable'...

Many of my clients are looking for new creative ways to market themselves. Check out this unique advertisement that was painted on a silo for a beer company. (The steel bands in particular prevented a true wrap.) Think of anything that is highly visible and in a high traffic area and you may have the next wrappable item!
~Amy Donahue
Signage Consultant

Beer...CAN!

Colorado brewery’s sign captures unique product

Consider this your crash course in Colorado culture: mountains and local hand-crafted beers. Yes, the Rocky Mountain lifestyle treats you well, and, as it turns out, Colorado’s love of area microbreweries has offered a unique opportunity to the signage industry. Oskar Blues Brewery, a popular beer manufacturer in Lyons, Colo., was opening its second restaurant, Oskar Blues Homemade Liquids &; Solids, in Longmont, Colo., and needed just the right eye-catching sign that captures its uniquely packaged ales.

BEER CAN SIGN REFLECTS BREWERY’S IMAGE
With kegs as water fountains and beer cans as menu holders, Oskar Blues Homemade Liquids & Solids shows off a distinctive, targeted décor that demands similar outdoor signage, and standing in front of the building was a 68-year-old grain silo. To some, this silo appeared to be just that: a beaten storage tower. But turning that old, worn silo into a towering beer can sign felt instinctive, says Chad Melis of Oskar Blues.

This was no ordinary paint job. The bands added a challenge. Though beer snobs may sneer at the thought of canned brews, Melis says Oskar Blues Brewery has challenged that notion by branding itself on premium ales delivered in a can. In fact, Oskar Blues Brewery established itself in 2002 as the first U.S. craft brewer to can its own beers, and has won multiple awards, proving that canned ales achieve the same quality as other packaging methods.
The lofty sign takes on the look of Oskar Blues’ popular Dale’s Pale Ale, a beer that, Melis adds, is the driving force in transforming the public perception about what’s possible from canned beer. Oskar Blues Brewery’s image is based on that irony, and Melis believes this sign was just the right medium to deliver the message.

“When I look at the silo, it’s the only thing I ‘can’ see. The can has been a vehicle for our complex beers to rattle public perception and challenge the status quo; and that fires us up,” Melis says. Although local sign codes prohibited the silo from listing Dale’s Pale Ale by name, the color scheme imitated the model beer, and “Oskar Blues Brewery” replaced the original logo while still projecting the look of that distinctive canned brew.

Article Author: Amanda McGrory

Publication Name: Sign & Digital Graphics

Creative bus stop advertisements

Advertising at bus stops is a fantastic way get the word out about your product or service. Not only are you able to market to people waiting for the bus to arrive, passerbyers are attracted to them - especially ones that are truly creative! Check out some of the most creative bus stop advertisements that make you look twice!
~Amy Donahue Signage Consultant


For more check out Rindert Dalstra's blog at:
http://creativecriminals.com/ambient/creative-bus-stop-advertisements/

Lovely Signage

My dream project... working on signage for a movie set. It's nice to see I don't have to necessarily be located in Hollywood!

~Amy Donahue
Signage Consultant

Sign Studios, a 20-year-old, Exon, PA-based sign company, fabricated 14 set signs and backdrops for the movie, The Lovely Bones, which was filmed in and around the Pottstown, PA area. Sign Studios designed and fabricated signs for 14 stores, which were constructed at the mostly-empty MacDade Mall in Ridley, PA, where several scenes were filmed. Two years ago, Sign Studios was commissioned by Dream Works to create an atmosphere of 1970s-era Norristown.
The movie, based on the 2002 Alice Sebold novel, is directed by Peter Jackson. The main character, Susie Salmon, who’s brutally raped and dismembered by a neighbor, narrates her story from InBetween, an ethereal purgatory.



Sign Studios’ owners Brian and Angela Yanoviak have crafted set signs for various films over the years, including What About Bob? for Disney and Touchstone, and Sommersby for Warner Brothers. His connection to Hollywood began almost 20 years ago when his business, with offices now in Wayne and Exton, was located in Virginia.
Yanoviak said the three graphic designers assigned to the project also devoted a month in 2008 to creating a toy town, a Fairfax shoe store, a Fairfax diner and the gas station.
The sets were created at the Wayne store and then transported to the MacDade Mall, where scenes from the movie were filmed.

Among the 1970s-era signs a psychedelic LOVE sign, and store signs for Top Tunes record store, Toy Town, the Fairfax Diner and Town Center News.
Dreamworks constructed all the sets.