The Big Cover-Up

Riddle me this: When is a landscape not really a landscape, but more than what it appears to be?

The answer: When it’s a civic, graphic-landscape scaffold wrap.

Civic graphic landscaping involves placing large-format, mesh, graphic images, based on art or urban beautification, over a building construction site. Such landscaping creates an uninterrupted view of a particular neighborhood despite its on-going building construction.

While the practice flourishes in Europe, it has just begun to take off in America with some very surprising and aesthetically interesting results.

Large-format graphic printing has expanded outdoor-advertising applications by incorporating vehicle and building graphics throughout urban landscapes. Although graphic-mesh outdoor advertising and vehicle graphics comprise large-format printers’ main revenue source, civic beautification via scaffold wraps also offers a potentially profitable area.

For example, beautification building wraps are a potential display outlet for construction sites. As a building frame is constructed or repaired, the scaffold facade is covered with mesh to prevent loose debris from filling the air and nearby streets.

The European wrap scene

In the United States, these huge, visually unappealing, black meshes are blank canvasses waiting to be covered with exciting and inspirational images. However, in Europe, scaffold wraps must graphically impart some sense of the completed building’s purpose.

Milan-based ExtraLarge Italia has become one of the country’s premier, large-format print providers for indoor and outdoor applications. The company’s four market areas for large-format graphics include Megaprints, Expoprints, Shopprints and Truckprints. The company, which uses Nur America Inc.’s Blueboard