Signhouse helps Yorkshire Air Ambulance keep its sponsors in the public eye-line…

Dave Caswell and co-director Nick Lees run Signhouse UK in Barnsley and the company’s output is a familiar sight on the streets and among the business communities in Yorkshire and beyond. Look overhead and there’s a chance you could see the company’s work too. It designs, makes, and installs sponsor-led graphics that help keep the Yorkshire Air Ambulance Airbus Helicopters aloft and doing the great job they do.

With the jaw-dropping expense involved acquiring, maintaining, and flying a qualified helicopter, it comes as something of a surprise to most to learn that the air ambulances are funded entirely by charitable contributions. Part of the income that funds the operation of the Yorkshire Air Ambulance derives from advertising. Businesses in the locality are understandably proud to be associated with the work of the air ambulance charity and so pay to have a small mention of their enterprise on the helicopter itself.

Signhouse UK got the job of provisioning the advertising graphics via a humorously convoluted chain of events that saw the company’s joint owner, Dave Caswell, attending a charitable event on short notice, winning an award for best-dressed-man, and then finding himself at a dinner table among some marketing people from the Air Ambulance. Dave’s company provided banners and other graphics initially and was then asked to provide advertising graphics for the helicopter.

Helicopter operators are pretty decided when it comes to places on the hull of a helicopter that it’s permissible to stick applied graphics and the prime piece of estate on a helicopter ambulance is the rear ‘clamshell.’ This part of the hull, it’s in the rear part of the machine under the tail-boom, opens to admit stretchers. It’s anything but flat and that presents a challenge when it comes to putting an array of graphic elements upon it.

Dave and his team came up with a way of neatly ordering the sponsor ‘labels’ so that they look tidy and ordered on the clamshell. Some of the labels represent long-term sponsors and others are on the grid for a shorter term. Everyone gets a share of the space and the opportunity for their ad to be seen.

Signhouse UK prints the advertisements on a pristine Roland VR640 with a lot of production under its belt. The printer works as brilliantly now as it did on day one and plays really well with the Metamark MD5-AH media the team uses. This is a high-tack variant of MD5 and displays all the colour quality for which it’s known.

Signhouse UK has a continuing relationship with the Yorkshire Air Ambulance charity and is proud to be associated with a such a worthy enterprise. Kudos too for the generosity of the advertisers who help keep the rotors turning and the committed crews flying.

Nice work, Signhouse UK.