Healthcare facilities have evolved tremendously over the past few decades. The days of all patients being sent to a catch-all county hospital have long passed. Contributing factors include: as more medical disciplines develop, the number of specialized facilities to house diagnostic and treatment centers will increase; increased competition drives medical practices to broaden and expand offerings, and, as the Baby Boomer generation ages into requiring more medical services (with Janis Joplin and Carly Simon replacing Frank Sinatra on waiting-room Muzak® systems), supply-and-demand dictates more facilities to accommodate patients’ needs.
Directors at the Geisinger Community Medical Center in Scranton, PA, a new facility, wanted to provide a more engaging and comforting environment for their patients. The facility provides many of the region’s best medical amenities – such as the joint-replacement and stroke centers, and the county’s only behavioral-health unit – but a laundry list of available treatments won’t necessarily calm the concerns of patients’ loved ones. Environmental graphics play an essential role in soothing volatile emotions.
To fulfill this role, Geisinger officials hired Creative Interior Imagery (West Pittston, PA) to design, fabricate and install approximately 50 panels (totaling 2,000 sq. ft.) of wall graphics for its reception and lobby areas. To convey a tranquil outdoor scene, Creative’s in-house photographer took tree photos using a GigaPan high-resolution-gigapixel, robotic-panoramic camera. Collaborating with Geisinger’s interior-design team and the Center’s architect, Burckavage Design Assoc., Creative’s design team developed the system’s design using Adobe Illustrator.
“Healthcare is definitely our strongest area for wallcovering projects, which represent about 25% of our overall business,” Eric Marsico, Creative Interior Imagery’s president, said. “Vinyl still is our go-to substrate 90% of the time, but fabric wallcoverings are a growing trend.”
To create the 200 linear ft. – 2,000 sq. ft. that span two floors – of wall and window graphics, the shop printed with its Epson SureColor S50670 64-in.-wide, solvent-ink printer at 300 dpi on LexJet WallPro™ SUV 15-oz., soft-textured, bright-white wallcovering material for the walls, and LexJet 30%-perforated media for the windows. To protect the graphics, installers applied Marabu Coatings’ ClearShield WallArmor liquid laminate on a roll laminator.
“The biggest challenges on the project were precisely matching the colors of the painted walls, and laying out the graphics so they would mesh cohesively into a larger graphic when viewed from outside,” he said.