Platform Vinyl Wraps Get Greensboro Aquatic Center TV-Ready

Buildings aren’t the only structures that may be wrapped. Graphic Visual Solutions (Greensboro, NC), a 27-year-old graphics provider, decked out the dive tower at the Greensboro Aquatic Center (GAC) in preparation for last year’s U.S. Diving Championship, which took place shortly after the London Olympics. The GAC had recently installed wider dive towers to enable it to host synchronized diving, an increasingly popular event.

“The GAC is a new facility, with state-of-the-art amenities,” Scott Engle, Graphic Visual Solutions’ marketing director, said. “However, its dive tower was bare concrete, and the Center’s management decided to dress it up to be broadcast on national TV, and to boost the Center’s appeal in attracting future events.”

Working only with the client’s furnished logo, Graphic Visual Solutions devised the color scheme and wrap’s layout, which covers four diving platforms and their support beams, with Adobe Creative Suite. Integrating the graphics closely with the Center’s existing décor was a key consideration, Engle said.

“Overall, the wrap spans slightly more than 2,000 sq. ft.,” Engle said. “We broke the wrap’s design into 86 sections to manage registrations, which was critical across the platforms’ arcs, joints and convex surfaces – particularly underneath the platforms.”

Of paramount concern was finding the appropriate media for such a unique installation. Engle said, “This is an unusual environment, because it’s wet, humid and constantly exposed to chlorine. Also, the concrete has quite a few pits and blemishes that we wanted the wrap to conceal.”

After having performed tests on several materials in these conditions, Graphic Visual Solutions selected Asphalt Art’s CatWalk, a translucent, short-term media that’s water, slip- and chemical-resistant. Engle said, “The wrap gives the towers the appearance of being airbrushed on the platforms, and provided a much more seamless appearance than a typical wall wrap. It also camouflaged the points where the metal and concrete parts joined, so the client was pleased.”

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The shop printed the wrap on its HP Scitex FB 6100 dual-function, flatbed printer – in eight-color mode to optimize color – at 100 dpi. To ensure precision with logo placement, they were printed on 3M™ Controltac™ with Comply air-release cast media with a HP LX 850 latex-ink printer and placed after the wrap’s install. Because of the extremely tall towers and the proximity to the pool, installers had to work carefully. They maneuvered a knuckle-boom truck with a 45-ft.-long reach through the tight quarters as they applied the wraps.