September 27, 2021 Reanne Duffy

Links Signs and Graphics was among the first signs and graphics companies in the UK to use digital print for décor and experiential applications…

 

Links Signs and Graphics is based in Blackpool and its applied digital decor works are responsible for delivering the visual impact needed by some of the world’s best-known experiential attractions in the popular seaside town. Walls and digital graphics were made for each other. Anywhere there’s a sound surface wearing nothing more imaginative than emulsion paint, the Links Signs and Graphics team can find ways of improving it.

 

The Bennett family, who run Links Signs and Graphics, are among the vanguard of respected industry veterans who helped pioneer the adoption of computerised signmaking technology. Their influence also includes developing supply networks furthering the widespread use of digital print. The team at Links Signs was experimenting in the area of print applied to walls long before there was a recognised digital decor sector of the digital signmaking market, or specialist material products addressing the need.

 

Among the earliest of Links Signs public applications of digital print in a decorative area was a work created for Blackpool Royal Infirmary. The team at Links Signs produced a range of graphics for application in a corridor which not only delivered a total transformation of the available space and its décor, it embodied therapeutic value too.

 

The graphics depicted renderings which evoked the Blackpool locality and which helped elderly patients at the infirmary connect with distant memory. The skilfully edited content removed the harder edges present in purely photographic renderings and softened the experience in the same manner a painting might. The applied works created a haven away from the unfamiliar surroundings of the infirmary and achieved what was intended.

 

At the time the work was undertaken, no popular digitally printable material existed or was available for application to walls. Wall-coverings of the era meant wallpaper and that in turn meant limitations. Patterns repeated at intervals determined by the press hardware and widths hovered around 60cm. With custom-content really out of the question too, the only popular way of getting big images on walls was to commission a mural painter or produce a matrix of photographic output at eye-watering expense.

 

Links Signs’ experimentation in the field helped the team to develop strategies for reliably adhering applied digital graphics to walls and sound surfaces. From there, developing effective application techniques and other tactics yielded the very beginnings of what’s  become a major application for pressure sensitive materials. The work delivered to the infirmary was just a beginning.

 

As the application gained traction and word spread, Materials manufacturers began to take an interest, among them Metamark. With materials better suited to the applications Links Signs was delivering, came welcome additions to the range of Metamark materials that could be used, and improvements in adhesive technology meaning easier application. Links Signs was ahead of the game in understanding the potential and so began really popularising the medium.

 

One of Links Signs best known customers operates many of Blackpool’s key attractions including the world-famous Blackpool Tower and Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks. Experiential attractions like these have an elevated appetite for ambient decor and numerous contexts for its use. Links Signs, with the benefit of its understanding, was, and is, able to deliver solutions to long-standing issues to such customers.

 

The Waxworks’ appeal centres around situation-settings that put the attending audience in proximity with handmade, life-sized ’statues’ representing a huge range of celebrities. The figures are so real, they stand the closest scrutiny. It’s only the lack of any movement that gives the game away. This experience has been popular for many years and little has changed however, whereas audiences of yesteryear were content to admire from a respectful distance, today, it’s all about grabbing selfies.

 

Links Signs and Graphics’ work at the attraction employs  thousands of square metres of digital print to add ambient décor and context settings to the brilliant exhibits. In so doing, each ‘exhibit’ gets what amounts to its own room, something akin to a studio set. The attending audience can move from one area to the next and see the attractions’ celebrities in an individual setting.

 

Links Signs and Graphics’ team fully leverages the attractions of the digital print medium in enhancing the audience experience. Every area is custom-designed without fear of breaching limitations in terms of the available size of the digital output needed or any concern about quality limiting the amount of detail it can display. Unlike its early works, the latest use materials from Metamark’s Decorative Digital Material Ranges. These materials shrug off the occasional bump and still look good. Something of an expert in application, Links Signs and Graphics use Metamark Silver Bullet to prime and prepare surfaces for the application of digital print.

 

With applied graphics in situ, the world-famous attraction can,  though Links Signs and Graphics, effect changes or create seasonal events on a time limited basis. New exhibits come and older ones are retired so the appetite for experience-enhancing decor is always there.

 

The team’s work in the locality involves many of its attractions. Including, the famous Blackpool Tower. It too employs Links Sign and Graphics’ services to provision applied decor contributing to the ambience and branding needed. Sea Life benefits from the ambience and effect and also realises the functional contribution applied decor can achieve - it delivers major elements of the attraction’s branding and functions in terms of wayfinding too.

 

Digital print in creative hands can claim many competencies, not least the extent to which it can be scaled. While major attractions can consume many thousands of square metres of applied graphics to walls, there are other institutions and even domestic situations in which the application can punch well above its weight. 

 

To use a phrase the Links Signs and Graphics’ team may itself have coined, ‘Functional Décor’ is elevated to the extent it practically represents its own sector of the digital decor market. It encompasses infographics and murals-with-a-message among many other things. The Links Signs and Graphics team’s work in the area has seen them delivering graphics on a smaller, but no less impressive scale, to schools, small enterprises and the hospitality sector in the town and beyond.

 

Schools in particular have benefitted as Links Signs and Graphics’ Carl Bennett explains. “The ability to get messages in a colourful and engaging way in front of a school audience is profound. Schools these days have an obligation toward branding and expect to see that reflected in applied decor that also includes the curriculum or images of the locality. Digital graphics are perfect for this. Every wall or surface can do something more than just hold up the ceiling now. The potential is huge and we’ve developed quite a talent for finding it at Links Signs and Graphics we’re told.”

 

Experience obviously counts when you’re pioneering a new application and Links Signs and Graphics can certainly claim it. Across all the attractions, businesses and other establishments that the Links team has helped, Shaun Bennett estimates that the company has printed and installed some XXXXX square Metres of material. That’s a lot of space that’s now denied to uninspiring paint, a lot of space delighting visitors to major attractions, a lot of space promoting and educating. The Links Signs and Graphics team can be proud that they promoted a very potent application to popularity. Metamark, is certainly proud to have supplied and developed the materials needed.