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As the housing market remains chronically mired in sluggish sales volume and flatlining values, more urban professionals (who would’ve purchased homes in prior generations) now choose to rent. This increased demand heightens competition, which motivates multifamily-unit owners and developers to exploit all available promotional avenues to reach their desired demographic.

Kettler (McLean, VA), the majority owner of the newly built Millennium at Metropolitan Park, an upscale, 19-story, 58,000-sq.-ft. apartment complex in Arlington, VA, enlisted Art Display Co. (Capitol Heights, MD) to develop a window-graphic program that provided elegant, yet fun, digital graphics for the property.

Arthur Goldberg, Art Display’s executive vice president, said Kettler’s representatives wanted life-size digital graphics installed in the Millennium’s ground-floor windows that showed people chatting, eating, boutique shopping and otherwise enjoying themselves. He said Art Display had served as a signage and architectural-graphics vendor for Kettler for several years, so trust had long been established.

Consequently, because finding suitable photographic images proved difficult, Goldberg persuaded them to create graphics from illustrations instead.

“The project required six weeks, but the first two were basically wasted on searching for and presenting photos that were ineffective or cost-prohibitive to produce as high-resolution images,” Goldberg said.
After having sold Kettler on the concept, he researched various online images. Using his traditional, artistic training, Goldberg produced by hand 16, 4 x 5-in., ink line drawings that depicted stylish people at leisure.

Art Display’s Vlad Solodkov and Diana Cheshmedjiev scanned them into his Mac at 650 ppi, produced them at 3.5 x 6 in., and colored them with felt-tip pens and colored pencils. Low-resolution image files were sent to the client for approval. Using Photoshop, Art Display’s design team enhanced the colors, increased color saturation and boosted the outline contrast.

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“It was stimulating to implement my traditional drawing skills, which doesn’t happen on many projects,” he said. “However, it was challenging preparing the images for large-scale printing. To do this, we had to overlay the black-and-white, outline scan, which meant we had to overlay the scan exactly on top of the colored version.”

The 16 graphic panels measure 2,245 sq. ft.; the 8-ft.-tall windows varied in width (some spanned 20 ft.). Goldberg split each image into sections to account for the window mullions and doorways. He designed each image file as a 60-dpi, 108-in.-tall, four-color PDF.

Because of the project’s scope and cost, Goldberg selected 3M’s Controltac with Comply air-egress media. To keep the color vibrant long-term, Art Display coated the graphics with 3M’s 8519 luster-finish, clear overlaminate. (Goldberg wasn’t sure how long the window graphics would stay in place: “Probably until every unit is leased,” he said.)

Art Display printed the graphics on the shop’s Seiko IP-6900 solvent-ink printer,using Wasatch’s SoftRIP.
Although they don’t require as much preparation as other surfaces, window graphics often need more finesse for vinyl application. Because glass readily expands and contracts, heat guns generally aren’t recommended for vinyl application. After having prepped the window with a pump sprayer filled with dish soap and water, installers applied the media with a 6-in.-wide, wallpaper squeegee.

“The graphics engage the customer without an overt, advertising message,” Goldberg said. “Kettler wanted to convey an upscale, fun ambience, and I think the artwork creates a depiction of ‘the good life,’ which is certainly what they want prospective tenants to envision there.”