At age 42, I’m among the youngest who can remember when TV options comprised the three major networks and one offbeat station on the UHF frequency (the screwball channel depicted on Weird Al Yankovic’s 1980s movie named with the same three letters wasn’t too far off the mark). My family had cable TV installed when I was 11, and ESPN, HBO and other newly available channels instantly won favor over network TV. Today, with hundreds of channels readily available, network executives must aggressively reach prospective viewers.
As valuable as online ads and social-media outlets are to any advertising campaign, any marketing format that can reach a nearly captive audience is very valuable. Enter wall graphics positioned in a high-traffic neighborhood on a wall adjoining San Diego’s PETCO Park, home of MLB’s Padres, which will be seen by tens of thousands of fans at every home game – plus thousands more motorists and pedestrians who pass the stadium, which is situated near San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, its primary entertainment district. Since 2010, Off The Wall has produced graphics for Comic Con, which takes place annually at the San Diego Convention Center. Typically, Comic Con attracts more than 100,000 fans of comic books, science fiction and other, fantasy-related books, movie and shows.
This wrap promotes Once Upon a Time, a TV show which has aired for four seasons. Set in Storybrooke, ME, a fictional town, its characters are fairy-tale protagonists who’ve had their memories stripped by an evil fantasyland queen, but are starting to obtain clues about their true identities.
Above All Media, an Irvine, CA-based, billboard-management company, hired Las Vegas-based Off the Wall Signs to produce and install the wrap. Rocky Faith, Off the Wall’s owner, said building wraps represent approximately 75% of its business.
Awestruck Media Group, a NYC-based design agency, submitted the graphics with Adobe InDesign. Using Caldera’s VisualRIP, Off the Wall ensured color accuracy. To make the printing process more efficient, Faith’s shop takes an unorthodox approach.
“Most companies who print building wraps know to lay out buildings as grids,” Faith said. “Not
every section is going to be an equal size. Your installation and quality-control teams should print panels out of order, to optimize the number of yards of media printed per roll, to save material cost and boost efficiency.”
The shop printed the approximately 12,000-sq.-ft. wrap on an HP Latex 3000 printer, at 50 dpi, which Faith said provided the ideal setting for super-sized graphics. Off the Wall printed the graphics using Arlon DPF 6700, a highly conformable, wall-wrap media. It’s laminated with Arlon’s 3220 satin-finish topcoat.
Installing such a behemoth building wrap required several approaches. To navigate the wall’s upper reaches, installers rappelled down from the roof equipped with panels and squeegees. The remain-
ing sections were installed from a boom lift and suspended swing stages.