Wide-format Graphics: Case study on UrbanArts

by all | 20 June 2017 10:08 am

By Peter Saunders
Toronto-based UrbanArts is a charitable organization that has worked with schools to get young people involved in, among other activities, creating murals as a way to contribute to community development. With professional-level support, the non-profit arts council’s youth participants painted these murals on publicly visible surfaces.

Most recently—and much like the sign and graphics industry—they have turned instead to the concept of digitally printing images on vinyl and then installing them outdoors, both at street level and on the sides of high-rise buildings. This undertaking is seen not only as a way to help ‘modernize’ UrbanArts’ creative process, but also to better prepare the participants for jobs in the industry.

Supporting a new initiative
Focused on Toronto’s York South-Weston neighbourhood, UrbanArts’ goal is to build inclusive, engaged communities by enriching local people’s lives through the arts, culture and heritage, with a variety of programs, services and resources. In 2016, program manager Shah Ashraf Mohamed reached out to Jeff Uzbalis, a wide-format graphics specialist for 3M Canada, to help support the new digitally printed mural initiative, which would be partly paid for by the city of Toronto as a community pride and beautification project.

In turn, Uzbalis contacted Tony Iacobelli, president of AIP Media, a graphic installation company based in nearby Mississauga, Ont., to provide assistance in his own areas of expertise, including printing the graphics and training and supervising the youth for installation.

“I do what I can when I can, so I mentioned this project to Tony and we figured out how we could pull it off,” Uzbalis explains. “I presented my standard wall, window and floor graphics workshop to the youth at an UrbanArts facility and then they went to Tony’s shop for further learning. He even told me, ‘if they’re good, I’ll hire them!’”

“When Jeff told me about this project, he was very plugged into the concept of having these creative young people drive it,” says Iacobelli. “They were really focused on the combination of professional training and donated materials with local knowledge.”

Preparing the artwork
The project was launched with the application of printed murals to the exterior walls of Outlook Manor, a 39-m (128-ft) tall Toronto Community Housing (TCH) apartment building for seniors and single families just south of the intersection of Jane Street and Eglinton Avenue West, and the Fallstaff Community Centre, where free youth programs are offered year-round next to Falstaff Park and near Jane Street and Highway 401.

Toronto-based multimedia artist Zeesy Powers designed the murals with UrbanArts in mind. With the Falstaff artwork, for example, she incorporated a collage of photos from youth in the community.

“We explained how to prepare and modify the image files for wide-format printing,” Uzbalis says. “Tony’s team would be handling the printing, lamination and panelling.”

In both cases, the murals were printed on 3M’s Envision LX 480 wrap film, which does not contain polyvinyl chloride (PVC), using HP durable aqueous ‘latex’ inkjet printers.

High-level efforts
Of the two locations, the higher-profile was Outlook Manor, where a five-storey graphic would extend to the top floor. It was installed on the north side of the building over two days in late August—with a total work time of approximately 15 hours—by both AIP Media’s installers and the local youth, working from suspended swing stages.

“We trained the kids at my warehouse,” says Iacobelli. “The point of our involvement was to actually teach them at a professional grade and have them do real-world installs. They were very eager and committed. They were between 15 and 18 years old, but worked just as hard as installers twice their age!”

The building’s exterior surface features corrugated aluminum siding, so for every graphic panel drop, the team had to slice the vinyl along the corrugated edge and tuck it into the gap.

“We put together a time-lapse video for sharing via social media,” Iacobelli says.

Giving art a lift
The following month, the other printed graphics were installed at a more easily reachable level on an exterior wall of the Falstaff Community Centre. A scissor lift was the only special installation equipment needed for this job; Iacobelli trained the participants in its use.

“This job was simpler, but was substantially slower to complete—about 200 hours—because the kids took on a lot more of the workload this time than we did,” he explains. “I would say the five participants did 70 to 80 per cent of the work entirely by themselves. We were really just there to supervise them and provide tips.”

Developing tomorrow’s professionals
UrbanArts’ participants completed the wrap installations within three weeks of each other.

“They worked tirelessly to apply more than 177 m² (1,900 sf) of vinyl by the deadline of October 1,” says Iacobelli. “This was a great community project. It was fantastic to see what young minds could do to these brick-wall canvases.”

Since the mural installations, one of the youth who worked on both buildings has indeed continued to help AIP in a professional context, i.e. getting paid to work on its job sites.

“We are so busy in the graphics industry, we sometimes forget how it is driven by creative people and their unique way of looking at the world,” says Iacobelli. “All of these kids can now point to their real-world experience.”

And in helping young people gain relevant skills, both 3M and AIP are aiming to ensure the sign and graphics industry will benefit from a new generation of employees.

“Our business suffers from having a relatively low profile within the greater economy, with few young people aware of the opportunity to join it,” says Uzbalis. “As a result, the industry is underserved. Projects like this can help change that.”

With files from AIP Media and 3M Canada. For more information, visit www.aip-media.com[5] and www.3mgraphics.ca[6].

Source URL: https://www.signmedia.ca/wide-format-graphics-case-study-on-urbanarts/

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