Into the Blue

When tourism serves as the lifeblood of a local or regional economy, it’s important for destinations that serve such clientele to frequently reinvigorate their spaces with new signage and graphics. On the Hawaiian Islands, tourism’s super-sized role in the 50th state’s economy amplifies the need for proactive visual-graphic upgrades

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The Maui Ocean Center enlisted Doug Allan, proprietor of Kahului, HI’s Island Sign Co. to develop 132 sq. ft. of graphics for a new exhibit. Allan and his staff produced a series of laminated digital prints, which they applied to routed-MDO panels.

In past years, Wayne Miller, the Maui Ocean Center’s operations manager, had contracted exhibit designers and installers from Australia. But, given tight economic times, he elected to handle the project in-house. Thus, he contracted a freelance designer to create the graphic template. Allan exported the files from the designer using Adobe CS4 and set up the job’s panel seams and overlaps using Photoshop. Because the graphics required cut-outs that revealed some of the highlighted ocean flora and fauna, Allan said producing the graphics required close coordination with the designer and carpenters.

To output the graphics, Island Sign used its Mimaki JV-3 printer with SS2 solvent inks on 3M Controltac film. To create crisp lettering at small sizes and produce gigantic prints to avoid corner seams – and “create enough durability to withstand curious little hands”, Allan said – he created one behemoth, 1GB file to optimize RIP usage. To protect the film, the shop used Optima’s Opti-Koat satin-finish laminate. To cut out the MDO hole, as well as the acrylic bubbles that would fill them, fabricators used the shop’s MultiCam 3000 CNC router. Allan installed the acrylic panels with Stand Off Systems’ aluminum hardware.

He said feedback was overwhelmingly positive: “Because this project was successful, [Miller] plans to approach future exhibits the same way.