Best of the Best: Top Shops Product Spotlight

The Luxor Hotel Casino located in Las Vegas, NV, asked Precision Color to create a graphic wall. As the hotel is constantly renovating its interior, they needed this urgently needed this wall installed since management does not want customers looking at a bare construction wall detracting from the ambiance of the hotel.

The wall itself is 304 feet long and 12 feet high consisting of 76 separate panels which had to be lined up perfectly. The time constraints put on our company were enormous and it took tremendous effort and team work to provide and install this enormous wall.

Luxor was so thrilled with the project that once the construction was completed, the graphic was moved into the actual theater hosting the Criss Angel show and placed under one-inch frosted glass and is now a permanent display.

Rank 18
Big Ink Display Graphics
Eagan, MN
www.inkbig.com

BIG INK Display Graphics produced a 192 foot by 18.5 foot banner for BBDO and Twin Cities Dodge dealers that hung on the wall of the right field at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, MN. The size of the banner is impressive, but the most challenging part of producing it was the fact that the banner had to fit perfectly into an existing mounting system. If the mounting didn't match up, the banner would be useless. In order to assure that the finishing was placed in the exact same positions, the old banner was shipped in and BIG INK produced the new banner on top of the old. Also, the banner had to be durable, since it is removed and replaced in between Twins games. Over 2000 feet of Velcro was sewn to the banner so it could be mounted and remounted.

CLIENT: BBDO and Twin Cities Dodge dealers
DIMENSIONS OF THE PRINT: 192x18.5 feet of 13 ounce banner vinyl
SPECIFICS: Printed on a Vutek 3360 solvent printer with Vutek ink.

Click here to view images from Twins game.

Additionally, BIG INK Display Graphics wrapped a 42 foot biodiesel bus for the Clean Air Green Tour, a mobile marketing initiative that is visiting more than 120 cities across the United States to educate consumers on the latest advances in sustainability. The Tour gives visitors hands-on experience with well-known brands that support environmental awareness including Salada Green Tea, Bosch Tools, Indy Racing League, Americans for Balanced Energy and Bosch Home Appliances.

CLIENT: A Clean Air, Green Tour
DIMENSIONS OF THE PRINT: We used a combination of 3M Control tac 180-C, 3M luster overlay and 3M clear perforated window film on a 53 foot trailer for a total of approximately 1300 square feet.
SPECIFICS: Printed on a Vutek 3360 solvent printer with Vutek ink.

Rank 19
MegaPrint Inc.
Plymouth, NH
www.megaprint.com

We produced three 53x104-inch pieces of backlit film for the Des Moines County Heritage Center in Burlington, Iowa. They were converting an old public library building into their museum, and wanted to do something dramatic in the reading room of the 1898 building, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The room has 23 foot ceilings, wonderful old woodwork and fireplaces, and enormous windows.

The customer built light boxes to fit into several of the windows, and natural light is used to illuminate the backlit graphics. One graphic has an historic photo of the town taken from the building in 1899, and it is displayed next to an identical window from which people can see the same view of the town as it is today. The other two windows have historical photos of Native Americans and a steamboat on the nearby Mississippi.

The display was conceived and executed by Will Thompson of Armadillo Arts, and the backlit boxes were built by Paragon Cabinet of Iowa City with oak to match the wonderful period wordwork that makes the building worthy of the Historic Register.

At night, the backlighting works in reverse, and the large pictures create interest in the building with passersby.

© Photo by Astrid Bennett
Will Thomson, Armadillo Arts, Graphic Art and Exhibit Design, Iowa City. The original photo was scanned at 2400 dpi from a plate in the archives of The State Historical Society of Iowa in Iowa City, taken at Tama, Iowa in 1905, on the Meskwaki Settlement. Click to view larger image.	The Steamboat Window comes from an original in the archives of the Des Moines County Historical Society, showing a Mississippi River steamboat in port at Burlington, Iowa at around 1900. Click to view larger image.	The Town Window image comes from the same source, and is downtown Burlington at the turn of the 20th century. Click to view larger image.	The gallery view shows a portion of the Grand Gallery of the Des Moines County Heritage Center, Burlington, Iowa, on the evening before the opening, February 21, 2009. Click to view larger image.