Britten Inc. Celebrates Lone Star State’s Wild Places

Texas is no place for the timid. Everything there is done in a bigger, bolder fashion. So, the parks that line the 900-mile, north-to-south Lone Star State expanse feature a landscape of diverse topography, flora and fauna that few states could rival. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation (TPWF), a Dallas-based organization dedicated to preserving the state’s natural resources, protecting threatened species and providing outdoor-recreation venues, wanted to suitably commemorate its 50th anniversary at the celebration that took place at Houston’s Friedkin corporate campus in March.

The organization hired Britten Studios, a Traverse City, MI-based, digital-graphics provider that’s been in business for approximately 30 years. Like much of Britten’s business, the project stemmed from a referral from a longtime client who was approached by a TPWF official.

For the project, TPWF allowed Britten’s design team access to an expansive library of images that chronicle some of the innumerable species that live on TPWF-protected lands. Britten Studios integrated the broad array of images and edited them for color vibrancy using Adobe Creative Suite 6 software.

The job entailed a 12 x 30-ft., freestanding installation that stood outside the entrance. The shop seamlessly printed the pattern as a single panel on a 16-ft.-wide HP Scitex XL Jet 1500 solvent-ink printer using 15-oz., vinyl banner material. To install the banner, Britten built a custom-configured version of its MegaStand™ banner-tensioning, freestanding apparatus.

The graphics celebrate the expansive opportunities that Texas lakes and rivers provide for fishing enthusiasts of all ages. For dramatic effect, they mounted the award-winning fish caught during the Toyota Texas Bass Classic. The fish were preserved by a taxidermist, and mounted with a proprietary bonding process.

Britten created additional visual appeal by constructing a 12 x 40-ft., wall-mounted banner situated along an interior corridor during the 50th-anniversary gala. Like the exterior, freestanding display, the panels were printed with canvas-banner material on the HP Scitex XL Jet 1500 printer, and they were installed with a custom configuration of the company’s MegaStand hardware that tensions the material.

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The display was cleverly devised with four flatscreen TVs already installed on the wall, for which Britten provided custom content that reinforces the bighorn sheep and sheer vastness of West Texas desert. The installation features LED uplighting; however, to conceal the lightsource from view, Britten routed a shroud from United Industries’ Ultra® Board rigid, foam-core media.