Digital Graphics Feature Cover Articles

Digital From Day One
THE BIG PICTURE, March 1999

Digital Portfolio

   Not all digital-graphics producers have roots in the photo lab, reprographic, sign-making, or screen-printing fields. Some shops, such as DGI, started from scratch roughly five years ago, after recognizing the potential demand for short-term color graphics made feasible by new digital-printing technologies. In this case, Scott Landry (currently DGI's vice president of operations and technology) joined forces with some friends in product sales at IRIS Graphics, who noticed that the IRIS 3047 printer was being profitably used not just for its intended use in prepress proofing, but also for short-run, color output.
    DGI started with a couple of Iris printers, then added Raster Graphics DCS 5400 and DCS 5442 electrostatic printers. Most recent purchases include two Raster Graphics PiezoPrint 5000 inkjet printers and a ColorSpan HiRes DisplayMaker 7100 thermal-inkjet printer. As a front end for the RasterGraphics and ColorSpan systems, DGI uses multi-server Onyx PosterShop RIP/print-management software. The company also operates a GBC Pro-Tech Orca III finishing station and recently was named a 3M Scotchprint Authorized Manufacturer.
    On the plus side, being digital from day one meant that DGI didn't have to phase large-format digital printing into its existing operations and retrain employees. But the downside, it didn't have an existing base of customers to which it could sell large-format digital prints.
    Instead, DGI has systematically attacked the visual-communications market with a smart mix of proven marketing strategies, ongoing R&D into new materials and applications, and an infectious enthusiasm for the unique capabilities of digital printing.
    Bob Karlis, who had been a senior executive at several consumer-products companies, was brought in as president and CEO. He hired seasoned sales executive Bob Bekesha to be VP of sales and marketing. Together, DGI's management team has built an organization committed to customer service and education.
    Several times a year, DGI hosts Visual Imaging & Ideas Seminars, at which graphic designers, interior designers, and other potential customers learn about the new materials and creative applications of large-format digital printing. Attendees tour DGI's facility and see a host of creative ideas for trade-show and retail marketing, package prototyping, vehicle graphics, posters, and event banners. Seminar instructors discuss what can be done with dye sublimation and vinyl transfer, and they highlight customizable wallpaper that can be installed with standard wallpaper paste. They also explain the relative merits of electrostatic, Iris, thermal-inkjet and Piezo-inkjet output, and various laminating and finishing options. To help designers understand that large-format prints aren't meant to be viewed under a loupe, DGI posts full-sized proofs on a wall at the back of its shop and encourages designers to judge the quality from the appropriate viewing distance.
    For designers who want to try a few large-format projects, DGI's visual-imaging seminar discusses file preparation requirements, including explanations of CMYK vs. RGB printing and how to achieve the desired colors. "We never teach them everything in one hit," explains Bekesha. "But we want them to feel comfortable with the whole process, and understand that we have a lot of information that they can fall back on."
    Another key to DGI's success is the use of project managers rather than sales reps. The project manager's role is to understand the client's needs and provide intelligent options as to how those needs might be addressed. When project managers call on potential customers, they bring along large bags of sample materials.
    Everyone at DGI understands there is no such thing as a routine job. When interior designers of the Legends sports bar in Boston's new FleetCenter wanted to add some atmosphere without disrupting the existing structure, DGI experts designed a 70-ft.-long, behind-the-bar mural that preserved the feel of the old Boston Gardens within the newness of the Legends bar. Starting with a panoramic photo of the last Bruins hockey game to be played at Boston Gardens, the 700 sq. ft. mural was produced on FLEXcon TC 160 vinyl in eight panels with an electrostatic transfer-to-vinyl process. Installing the panels required meticulous attention to detail because certain bars on the wall couldn't be removed. Even though the strips had to be wrapped around the metal beam, everything aligned correctly, as evidenced by an individual depicted in the crowd shot with his head above the beam, and his neck below it. The gold letters mounted on the mural are souvenirs from the exterior of the old Boston Garden.
    FleetCenter officials were so pleased with the results, they commissioned DGI to produce Plexiglas signs for the escalator area, a fabric backdrop for a mock section of Boston Gardens recreated in the Sports Museum, and a collage designed to enhance the external walkway leading up to the FleetCenter.
    For Reebok Outlet Stores, DGI worked closely with Reebok managers on a new nationwide store décor program. A single-piece mural strip (32 x 3 ft) adorns the wall space above the fixtures, and several 4 x 6-ft prints were output, mounted back-to-back, and suspended from the ceiling. DGI also provided 30 x 60-in. vandal-proof "endcaps." The prints, all created on DGI's electrostatic printers, were face-mounted to clear acrylic and installed at the ends of the aisle racks. DGI produced and installed graphics in Reebok's 70 outlet stores nationwide. As new store open and other are updated, DGI recommends refinements.
    One of DGI's value-added services is fulfillment, in which large orders are output in smaller quantities and shipped out as needed. "We give large customers only what they need on a weekly or monthly basis, so they're free to change marketing programs without having dollars tied up in inventory," explains Karlis.
    DGI also produces vehicle graphics, using its company van as a model. Bekesha, shown above recreating the pose he adopted for his photo on the side of the DGI van, estimates that the wrapped van provides DGI with about $60,000 of free advertising a year.
    "I think we're only beginning to appreciate the potential for digital-printing technology," says Bekesha. When DGI's project managers show off new applications, the comment they hear most often is "Wow! I didn't realize I could do this." Karlis and Bekesha agree, however, that some of the more routine jobs are indeed being done in-house by companies that have bought their own wide-format inkjet printers. But DGI staff members have observed that clients who have their own inkjet printers tend to be more knowledgeable customers for larger, more challenging projects because they better understand how the large-format digital-printing process works.
    Some companies pay more attention to sales than technical competence. Other firms get wrapped up in the technology at the expense of sales activities. DGI strives to excel in both areas. While ongoing R&D and technical competence are critical, "We de-emphasize the technology," says Karlis, "because we do all the things required to get the right product to the customer, regardless of the process we use."

A Garden Remembered
DIGITAL GRAPHICS Magazine

By K. Schipper

Client: The New Boston Garden Corp., Boston
Fabricator/Installer: Digital Graphics Inc. Burlington, MA.

Sports fans are a traditional lot, so those in Boston should be pleased to find a bit of the old Boston Garden–digitally, anyway–decorating the city's new arena.
    A remodel of some portions of the FleetCenter, built in 1995, left its owners, the New Boston Garden Corp., with some large-sized decorating problems. Coming to the rescue: three different digitally produced graphics from Burlington, Mass.-based Digital Graphics, Inc.
    The work actually stemmed from a specific need to fill a particular 10' x 70' space above the back bar in the Legends Bar, a restaurant reserved for season-ticket holders of the professional Bruins hockey team and Celtics basketball team on the center's third level.
    Todd Davenport, FleetCenter's project manager, says that as part of the restaurant's remodeling, photos from both the old Boston Garden and that city's sports history went up on the walls to enhance the décor.
    In looking for a cost-efficient way to put an appropriately themed mural in the approximately 700 square feet of space in the bar, Davenport returned the call of Robert Bekesha, Digital Graphics' vice president of sales and marketing.
    "It started out with the wall in the Legends Bar, but then it moved on to an area that's become a mini-theater for the building's sports museum, and then to the images in the stairwell outside the bar," Bekesha says. "We started offering solutions on one project, but it made sense for us to do the others, even though they're really three areas requiring three solutions using three different materials and three printing processes.
    "It was a matter of us coming up with some different options," Bekesha concludes.
    Although it would be difficult to reproduce many photos to fit a 10' x 70' space, Delaware North Corp., owner of the Bruins franchise, had an historic photo that came close to fitting the bill. During the last Bruins' match at the old Garden, a sports photographer shot a wraparound view of the game and the crowd.
    "It was probably 18" wide and 4-5" high, which was pretty proportional," says Peg Connolly, DGI's desktop production leader. "It included a whole bunch of the stands, the scoreboard and the ice."

    To increase the information available for scanning and improve the resolution, Connolly obtained an internegative of the shot, which was then scanned on the company's Linotype Topaz II scanner. Only portions of the image were scanned both to get the shot truly proportional and to give the customer the best image possible.
    "For instance, they wanted to reduce the ice surface on the wall," says Bekesha. "They also wanted certain parts of the old Garden in–they definitely wanted the Bruins banners and Celtics banners on top–but then you end up with more ice."
    Ultimately, the job ended up being scanned in two pieces that created 500 MB files to get the necessary parameters and resolution, Connolly says. It was then output on a Raster Graphics 5442 electrostatic printer on 85g presentation paper at 300 dpi in 42" strips. It was then transferred to a FLEXcon vinyl with a UV luster laminate on top using Digital's ORCA II. Further complicating the job was Digital's need to print the image in horizontal–rather than vertical–strips to allow its installation around an in-place mounting system for the roof letters from the old Boston Garden.
    "On top of the old Garden, they used to have these big metal letters," says Douglas Silva, DGI's finishing leader. "These were installed on the wall at the bar. When they decided they wanted something more than just blank wall behind them, they took the lettering down but the angle iron they were mounted on was left up, so we had to go in and install the graphic between and around that."
    Because of the angle iron's position on the wall, Silva says some of the installation involved lining up the strips in the middle, then working toward the edges.
    "We really couldn't start flush right or flush left and line it up; we had to start where the break was," he explains. Nor was the huge mural the only challenge the company had to resolve for Davenport and his employers. The corporation and its architect, John Williamson of JQW Architecture, were also looking for a way to decorate the back wall of an area that's become a mini-theater on the fifth level of the FleetCenter. The area is set up the way it would have been for a Bruins' match in the old Garden, complete with wooden seats, the rink-lining dasher board and protective plexiglas.
    "They have a video set up, and along the side wall they wanted something that would give the feel of actually being at a game," says Connolly. "They wanted a little bit of movement, from something that had more dynamic to it than just a flat surface."
    Equally important, she adds, was the need to cover an approximately 10' x 24' space that included an elevator panel that couldn't have anything flush against it.
    After discussing several options, the solution proved to be taking part of the already-scanned crowd used in the mural, printing it on a RasterGraphics 5400 on 85g presentation paper at 200 dpi in 50" strips. It was then transferred using dye-sublimation onto NFPA material, which meets national standards for flame-retardation. The strips were then stitched together to make the finished piece.
    Again, a big part of the job proved to be installing the graphic. Silva says several options were considered, from using curtain rods to grommeting the fabric and stretching it taut. Ultimately, a variation on the curtain was utilized.
    "We put up PVC (polyvinyl chloride) conduit, then used almost curtain-like hooks along the back after running a fine stitch line with monofilament thread across it," he explains. "It looks like it's freestanding, and since it hangs down to the top of the dasher boards, it really looks like a crowd of fans overlooking the game."
   For the final component of this three-image job, the fabricator was faced with yet another challenge–again involving substrates–this time in the stairwell outside the Legends Bar.
    Connolly says Davenport and his employers wanted three life-sized sports figures–a basketball player, a hockey player and an ice skater–to be imaged on clear plexiglas (along with some printed information about the restaurant) and hung at the top of the stairs leading to the bar.
    "We ended up doing a lot of image manipulation for them," she says. "They had generic players and they wanted to have an even-more-generic look that also had an artistic feel. We gave them several variations by manipulating the images in Photoshop®, and also giving them several different color schemes."
    Because of their location, the images had to be transparent. Connolly says her biggest concern was that the images wouldn't get good color saturation because they were being printed on a clear vinyl.
    To resolve that, Digital Graphics utilized a new transfer material from RasterGraphics called Spectrafusion, which was then printed at 309 dpi on a RasterGraphics Piezo 5000 inkjet printer.
    "We tested the material and found we were able to get really good color saturation," Connolly says. "The vinyl was then cut out and applied to the plexi. From a distance you're able to see it, but it doesn't block your vision if you're standing right in front of it, and it doesn't give the space that closed-in feeling."
    By comparison with the other two installations his team did at the FleetCenter, Silva says this portion of the job was comparatively easy. The vinyl was cut out and applied to the plexiglas in the shop, and then it was simply a matter of attaching the 4' x 8' sheets to the existing railing and going through the ceiling to anchor the top edges to a rafter.
    Total time on the job was a little under three months, with the final installation taking two days. Bekesha says a great deal of that was spent upfront working with Davenport and Williamson.
    "A lot of time involved them making decisions and finding the image for the mural that they wanted," he says. "Once we had a buy-in from them it was relatively quick to produce, but we wanted to make sure the clients had what they really needed, that they understood why we were doing some things and so they had sample proofs to see what was being done."
    DGI's president, stresses that the approach his company took in dealing with the FleetCenter's needs is typical of how it handles its clients.
    "Producing solutions to people's problems is our number-one priority," he says. "People such as those we worked with on the FleetCenter know they need and want something, but they don't know what it is until we show them the different ways we can image a project."
    Davenport says he was quite pleased with the assistance he received from Digital Graphics in bringing the project to fruition. And, while he says cost was a consideration in having the work done digitally, his ability to have input on the process–and comparatively quick turnaround–were also important.
    "They had the capability to produce images for us as we were progressing through the other steps of completing the remodeling project," he says. "In the arena business, you need quick turnaround, and Digital Graphics allowed us to do that."

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