It’s an
anniversary of sorts here at the Printer’s Devil blogspace. Today being my 650th
posting under this moniker.
This resulted in a
trip down memory lane looking at past musings, and seemed a suitable enough excuse
to action something already on the ‘to do’ list – that being to reprise a topic
from 2009.
At the time I wrote
about a local company, Allsigns, which had produced some graphic panels for
Brentford High Street, an area blighted by a stalled redevelopment plan.
More than three
years later, the proposed development remains a proposal, the blight is just as
blighty as ever, and those panels are still up.
Every time I walk
past the graphics I am amazed at how good they still look.
As good as new,
in fact. Not faded. And – somewhat incredibly given the locale – not vandalised
or defaced.
A call to
Allsigns was in order to find out the secret. Actually it was a call to Octink
as the company rebranded a while back to better reflect its wider offering.
Managing director
Mike Freely drives past the panels most days and unsurprisingly keeps an eye on
them too. He said there hadn’t been a single incident of graffiti or vandalism, which he believes
is testament to the fact that the designs were by local schoolkids. “It’s
almost self-policing,” he says.
And he too is
delighted by how well the panels have weathered the sun, wind, rain and general
grime of the high street environment.
And now for the
big reveal. How were they printed? Directly onto aluminium composite material
using one of Octink’s two Inca Spyders, with a gloss coating.
Useful to know
for anyone with a requirement for graphics with longevity.
Who knows, given
the rate of current progress I might well be reporting back on their condition again
in a few hundred blogs’ time.
