The lasting appeal of fabric graphics

by all | 24 February 2014 12:01 pm

By Peter Saunders
With both direct and transfer-based textile printing systems making their way into sign shops, digitally output wide-format fabric graphics are coming of age, particularly for point-of-purchase (POP) displays and trade show exhibits. There are a number of reasons more and more signmakers have become keen to work with soft substrates.

A light touch
“Signage fabrics can be preferable to vinyl or banner materials because they are lighter and easier to store in inventory and then ship,” says Catalina Frank, dye-sublimation product manager for Epson, a printer manufacturer that has recently embraced the transfer-based graphics market.

Having previously developed printheads for other manufacturers’ direct-to-textile printers, Epson started selling its own four-colour dye sublimation inkjet printers about three years ago in Brazil, which represented a very large and textile-heavy market. After studying the results and following up with further research and development (R&D) at its headquarters in Japan, the company expanded its push, bringing textile printers with roll-to-roll capabilities to other signmaking communities around the world.

“We’re focusing on different types of businesses that can benefit from soft signage,” says Frank. “From small to large sign companies, wide-format dye sublimation transfer printing is available at a variety of price points.”

While other major printer manufacturers have released direct-to-fabric presses, Epson’s focus on dye sublimation follows the example of garment printing. Its inks are certified for use on clothing.

“As in the garment industry, dye sublimation embeds the ink in the fabric for vibrant, durable colour,” says Frank, “so it’s perfect for photographic soft-signage applications.”

Developing new business
Electronics for Imaging (EFI) is among other printer manufacturers that have taken a different approach to the fabric graphics market. Some of its Vutek presses offer both direct and transfer-based printing.

“We don’t want to pigeonhole our customers, so we’ve developed larger industrial printers than can direct-print a flag, for example, or transfer for exhibition-type graphics that will be viewed more closely,” explains Mike Wozny, EFI’s strategic inkjet product manager.

With more than 10 years’ experience in the fabric graphics segment, EFI is on its third generation of printers geared for this market, but Wozny says there is still a lot of room to grow.

“North America is lagging behind Europe,” he says, “but globalization has had a huge effect. Signmakers and their customers alike hear about digital fabric printing at trade shows and start demanding it, so it works both ways.”

Wozny cites some of the same advantages as Frank, including the greater ease and lower costs of packing, shipping and installing fabric graphics compared to their vinyl counterparts, but also points out there is a steeper learning curve in terms of how the graphics are produced.

“If you haven’t done it before, you will need training for production,” he says. “Printing dye-sublimation inks onto fabrics is less forgiving than with vinyl. You also need to know how to finish the graphics after the raster image processor (RIP) and printing stages.”

The payoff for sign shops comes with higher margins on the finished products. And while the most successful market for fabric graphics is the retail industry, which is already known for its constant demand for new wide-format prints, a fabric printer can allow a sign shop to branch out into less traditional markets, including theatres, museums and interior décor.

“Most retailers are using soft signage the same way they use vinyl graphics, but now you’re also seeing fabric graphics on ceilings, for example, that were never decorated before, attached to a stretch frame,” he says. “I’m a big believer in business development and I have seen fabric printing really work for our clients. Some of them have grown to become the largest soft signage suppliers in their region.”

Complementing vinyl
In this sense, while fabric graphics represent a small fraction of the overall wide-format market, they can grow without necessarily replacing vinyl graphics.

“We actually started with fabrics in 2004 and only added vinyl later, in 2010,” says Nicki Wilson, general manager (GM) for Tex Visions, which specializes in printing on fabrics and manufactures banner stands, flags, banners, fence wraps, tents, signs, backdrops and even advertising umbrellas. “New customers often assume they have to use vinyl for their banner stands, but then they see fabric. And once they hold both materials in their hands, they tend to like the look and feel of fabric graphics more.”

When Tex Visions was founded in 2004, its specialty was outdoor flags. Over the years, the company has added indoor materials, including sheer, shiny and matte fabrics.

“Our customers like to see a huge variety of materials for different applications at different price points,” says Wilson. “For many outdoor applications, we use a knitted polyester fabric. It’s fairly sheer, so wind can pass through freely, but it also offers really good print-through characteristics. For indoor applications, we tend to use a more opaque polyester substrate.”

Wilson has seen demand for fabric graphics grow across all user groups, from fast-food chains to large-scale retailers to churches, but notes there are still not many companies that can produce them well, whereas even hobbyists operate vinyl printers in their garages.

“We try to offer display systems that accept both vinyl and fabric,” she says. “We try to keep it neutral, so our products can service a wider range of customers.”

High-end appeal
For other companies, however, fabrics have indeed largely displaced vinyl.
“We’ve done fabric printing for years, but it’s more predominant for us today,” says Lorraine Ng, project manager for Cheelo Graphics in Markham, Ont., which currently specializes in dye-sublimation printing of signs, banners, exhibits, trade show displays and backlit graphics, using a variety of large-format fabrics. “Even just five years ago, vinyl led our business, but in each of the past three years, the vast majority of customer requests have been for fabrics.”

Ng agrees fabrics are appealing to customers despite their relatively high price, because they are very light and can be folded up, so the initial investment pays off in greater durability.

“You have to be very cautious when handling vinyl,” she says. “If you fold it, it will wrinkle. And our customers don’t want displays that are hard to ship. I suspect they’re getting smarter about spending for the long term. Depending on the specific textiles used, fabric graphics can be washed and stretched back out, whereas vinyl doesn’t stretch as well and can bubble up. You don’t have to replace soft signage every six months. So, in retail, for example, what used to be plastic panels are now often extruded fabrics.”

Most of Cheelo’s graphics are sold to marketing agencies, not the final customers, so Ng says she doesn’t always know exactly how the company’s output is being displayed, but she describes a “mixed bag” of end uses beyond retail, including trade shows, special events and even permanent interior design fixtures in hotels, offices, condos and other facilities, such as Wozny’s aforementioned ceiling fixtures.

“Fabric looks more high-end than vinyl,” she says. “Scrim banners have a plastic sheen, a texture that doesn’t look as nice and sometimes curling at the edges.”

With regard to the material’s sheen, another esthetic consideration is reflectivity.

“When people want customized backdrops for photo shoots, like at a wedding with the couple’s names or a corporate event with logos, they don’t want the camera flash reflected on those graphics,” says Ng. “Even some matte textiles have a slight sheen along the edge, so the customer may need a completely matte fabric that won’t reflect anything.”

The latest trend Ng cites is the popularity of lightboxes. In keeping with the small profiles and low weight of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) installed to illuminate them, fabrics help keep the entire structures easy to handle.

“They have really taken off in the past year or two,” she says. “They’re more expensive than vinyl backlit graphics, but they really grab attention. Some buildings are using backlit fabric units in their lobbies, featuring landscape paintings, abstract artwork or other interior-design visuals to complement the architecture.”

Indeed, a wide range of lightweight, portable tensioning structures, often with aluminum tubing for frames, can be used to display fabric graphics. These may include flat or concave walls, canopies, podiums and shelving units, allowing fabrics to be integrated into practical structures. Others are display stands unto themselves, including tabletop graphic mounts, flag stands, wall-mountable frames, hanging structures, fabric lightboxes, rollup banner stands and pop-up fabric stretchers in various configurations. Exhibit designers’ creativity has also yielded many customized configurations.

Bigger and better
Accordingly, sign structures are being customized for fabric graphics. Aluminum extrusion manufacturer Comhan, by way of example, recently expanded from the Netherlands into the North American market with a 929-m² (10,000-sf) facility in Fergus, Ont. While it currently stocks inventory from Europe, there are plans to start manufacturing locally as demand grows.

“Fabric graphics are huge in Europe, but now Canadian and American signmakers are also moving into larger-format textile printing for both indoor and outdoor graphics,” says Theo Stork, manager of Comhan Canada. “We’re supplying extrusions to printing companies in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec and they cut them to the sizes they need.”

Like Cheelo, Comhan has identified a trend in mounting fabric graphics to lightboxes, whereby sign shops and their customers benefit from the low weight of the materials.

“You can now make a 3 x 3-m (10 x 10-ft) light box for double-sided fabric signage, for example, and there’s no need for supports,” Stork says. “Compare that to a vinyl lightbox, where the widest possible size is about to 2.4 to 2.7 m (8 to 9 ft) and you need to add acrylic for support, which means a lot more money and a lot more work. It’s also easier now to pre-make a lightbox for your customer. You just print, roll and ship the fabric graphics with an LED kit and they can install it on-site. The LEDs can even be powered with a Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection.”

Stork cites the capacity for larger sizes as one of the most significant benefits of fabrics over more traditional media. Swathes can be run through a 4.9-m (16-ft) wide printer and then sewn together to create building-size graphics.

“We’re seeing stretch systems installed during building renovations,” he says. “You have a see-through fabric for people working in the building, but from the outside, passersby see an image of the whole building as it will appear after the work is finished. And it’s not too expensive for the property developers to do. We’re even getting orders for 3 to 4 km (1.9 to 2.5 mi) of extrusions!”

To make such projects possible, not only have special textiles been developed for large-scale outdoor graphic applications, but spray-on coatings have also been formulated to protect the inkjet-printed images against fading under the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays.

“While most large-format fabric graphics are being installed at stores and stadiums, where they will only be up for a couple of years at most, two coats of these spray-on products will keep UV rays out for 10 years,” says Stork. “They also prevent graffiti from sticking. So, you’ll see more of these graphics on apartment buildings, hotels, highway barriers, museums, etc.”

Mainstream methods
The question that remains to be answered is how quickly these trends seen in Europe will reach the North American market at a mainstream scale.

“I see fabric graphics growing globally, but the Canadian market is a little bit behind,” says Miller Yao, director of Aclick, a fully digital large-format printing shop in Toronto that has introduced both direct-to-fabric printing and dye sublimation services under its XLprints banner. “Fabrics are better-looking, for sure, and easier to fold for transportation, as they can go into a small box and be handled without any special skills or extra manpower.”

Aclick recently added two durable aqueous ‘latex’ inkjet presses to its production department to support more direct-to-fabric printing for its clients, who include agencies acting on behalf of smaller print shops.

“We were getting customer inquiries for ‘greener’ printing,” says Yao, “so we invested in latex technology, which is even greener than other fabric printing processes, and we have gotten good results.”

The majority of Aclick’s output comprises indoor displays and backdrops, where Yao says fabric substrates show colour and details well, with no reflection, but there is still a noticeable quality difference between the permanently embedded inks of dye sublimation and the faster, less expensive direct-printed graphics of latex presses.

“Colourwise, I don’t think latex is there yet,” he says. “When you need a deep, dark black, a really bright red or certain other colours, the latex prints are not vibrant enough, so there are times when we have no option besides dye sublimation. The rest of the time, however, for 95 to 99 per cent of jobs, either way is fine.”

Yao favours latex printing for applications that do not need to be particularly vibrant or long-term, such as small logos on a backdrop for a single event or a lightbox for a one-time promotion (e.g. Boxing Day sales); and dye sublimation for recurring-use applications, such as trade show graphics that are shipped from city to city.

“After you wash a latex print, the colour comes off a little,” he says, “whereas dye sublimation cannot wash off, so it’s more durable.”

In the end, Yao and his colleagues actively explain the options to customers and, especially when considering a long print run, provide samples of both methods.

“Dye sublimation is more expensive, so we tell the client how it makes a difference, then we ask them to make the final decision,” he says. “Sometimes, the client doesn’t really notice a difference.”

With files from Epson, EFI, Tex Visions, Cheelo Graphics, Comhan Canada and Aclick. For more information, visit www.epson.com[8], www.efi.com[9], www.texvisions.com[10], www.cheelo.com[11], www.fabric-displays.com[12], www.comhancanada.ca[13] and www.xlprints.ca[14].

Source URL: https://www.signmedia.ca/the-lasting-appeal-of-fabric-graphics/

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