Better Banners Guide 1

ImagePerfect™

Advice on choosing the right banner material

Better Banners Guide

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Better Banners Guide 1

ImagePerfect™

Developments in technology bring constant innovations in banner materials, enhancing components and structural properties with positive consequences for overall performance. These product innovations are creating nuances between individual products that can make a measurable difference to the finished product, improving aesthetic appearance and extending banner life.

It’s human nature to opt for the ‘tried and tested’ option. But with such a wide choice of ImagePerfect materials now available, with a little consideration you can select a banner substrate that is absolutely optimised for purpose. ImagePerfect’s wide range of banner

Banners are booming and no wonder - with their high visual impact, affordability, flexibility and ease of installation, they’re ideal for a wide range of indoor and outdoor briefs.

For retail, hospitality, leisure environments, business, and events; banners are a popular choice, topping the list of products being created by the majority of signage and graphics businesses.

Your 10 Point Guide to Banner Material Selection

products, available in a variety of roll sizes, is specifically designed to offer the best possible ratio of price to performance. Whatever your need, with ImagePerfect you can be confident that you’re getting a great banner substrate at the right price.

We realise that this much choice can be baffling, so we’re setting out to help you make the right selection from the ImagePerfect family. In the pages of this guide, we’ll walk you through the 10 key factors that should influence your material specification for any banner job.

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ImagePerfect™

It may sound obvious, but your first consideration should be what the banner is for, where it will be located, and how it will be viewed. Make sure you have a clear brief from the client, with a full understanding of the role the banner is playing in their branding or communication.

You’ll then have a better feel for the specification of material you need, the physical resilience required and the client’s quality demands regarding the printed graphic.

Purpose

Of course you want the banner to look good, and the quality of the print is key to that. But how will it look a few months down the line? An outdoor banner will have to endure all extremes of temperature, sun, wind, rain and humidity.

You have a choice between two categories of banner – ‘event’ products with a shorter lifespan, and cast-coated banners which have a lifespan of around five years, unprinted. Most ‘event’ or laminated banner substrates in the market today have a one year unprinted lifespan, while ImagePerfect event banners from Spandex are good for three years outdoor. If you’re buying an ‘event’ product, it’s made from a fairly rudimentary yarn, which offers limited tensile strength. This is a key factor in the banner’s durability - against wind in particular.

Durability

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Talk to us at Spandex about all the possible options, and go back to your client with proactive suggestions on how to make the banner stand out and exceed their expectations. A knowledgeable dialogue with your client may guide them to a more informed choice of material, allowing you to deliver a better outcome, potentially boosting your margin and ensuring you get their repeat business.

If durability is critical, you’ll want to opt for a cast coated banner, with a better quality yarn. There are other issues too: PVC is inherently inflexible and prone to cracking. However, the top coat in cast coated products gives added protection with features such as cold-crack and UV-protective coatings, as well as other components to protect against mould, fungus and mildew. The encapsulation process also impacts durability; the robust sealed edge of a cast-coated banner is more able to withstand external stresses.

If you’re particularly concerned about abrasion of the printed image, consider an additional hand-applied ImagePerfect liquid laminate to give you more peace of mind.

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ImagePerfect™

Your focus should now turn to the level of print quality, bearing in mind the brand in question, the target audience, the subject and the environment for the banner.

Print quality is not just about the capability of your printer – your material choice can have a significant impact. To understand this, consider what a banner substrate is made of. Think of it as a ‘sandwich’ consisting of a yarn fabric encapsulated between two layers of PVC. The coarseness of the yarn fabric affects printability, as does the thickness and quality of the PVC layers. If you imagine the material in profile, the holes in the weave of the yarn form small ‘valleys’ in the banner substrate. With a coarse yarn and thin layer of PVC, the ink jetted onto the surface will

Printability4not reach these indentations, giving an incomplete printed image. That may be fine for applications viewed at a distance, but not for close-up applications. Any printable banner also has a top coat which receives the printed image; a higher quality coating will help to eliminate problems with flooding or poor ink absorption. The more sophisticated the coating, the better your banner will do justice to the output capabilities of your printer, enhancing colour gamut, intensifying blacks, achieving stronger colour contrast and delivering sharper text definition.

Next comes a specification that can make a difference to both ‘viewability’ and aesthetic appeal. Banner materials come in a choice of gloss and matt finishes, with some ‘semi-matt’ options. Your choice of finish will affect how the banner looks. The tendency among graphics producers is to opt for a gloss finish for outdoor applications and matt for indoor, since its lower reflective qualities are better suited to harsh, artificial indoor lighting.

As a guide this makes sense, but it’s worth exploring all the options. And if you’re delivering a photo quality image for a premium brand client, check out a super glossy alternative to really lift skin tones and give high impact to facial features.

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ImagePerfect™

Viewability is key if your banner is to do its job to promote or inform, and light plays a critical role. When choosing your material, understand the light sources in the installed environment; will it be frontlit, or is there a light source behind it which would point to a blockout material to prevent the banner from letting light through from the rear? If the banner will be seen from both sides, then specify a blockout material to really ensure that the image is viewable from all angles.

Opacity refers to the ability of your banner to let light through. Think of the opacity of a banner substrate as you would that of a paper product – with a sheet of paper,

Viewability6opacity is influenced by the density of the fibres, and the quality of the coating. So it is with banners; the yarn structure, combined with the layers of PVC, dictates opacity.

A banner material with low opacity – one that lets a lot of light through – will mean that the printed image is visible on the reverse of the banner. Consider whether that is aesthetically acceptable in the context of the job and your client. As a general rule, opt for a higher opacity product for a better aesthetic outcome, especially if the banner could be seen from both sides, and make sure your client understands why this matters.

Your banner needs to be installed to fulfil its purpose. Start by thinking about how and where the banner will be installed, and of the type of fixture. This may influence your choice of material weight, along with other hanging properties.

With a range of weights from 340gsm to 800gsm, ImagePerfect caters for the whole spectrum of applications. For example, 550gsm has been the traditional reference point for a quality banner, but it is now feasible to opt for a lighter 440gsm ImagePerfect banner material with no loss of strength, but all the benefits of a lighter material – ease of installation, end-of-life disposal, and lighter, lower cost suspension systems.

Installation5Dimensional integrity is also critical. Your banner may look stunning when it’s freshly installed, but will it stretch, curl or crease after a few weeks? ImagePerfect offers optimised hang-flat banners for high-end applications that will stay looking crisp for as long as you need them to.

If your banner is to be installed in a location where it could be viewed from both directions, consider doubling its communication value for the client by recommending a double-sided banner – that is, one with a printable coating on both surfaces. For minimal additional cost, the client could potentially double the impact of their graphics.

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ImagePerfect™

We’ve moved beyond the physical requirements of the banner to some more aesthetic considerations that can really make a banner grab attention. Along with opacity, whiteness is one of those factors. White is white, surely? Not so, if you recall the last time you looked for a tin of white paint; degrees of whiteness vary considerably across the range of banner materials available, with some having an off-white, creamy hue, and others offering a much brighter, crisper white.

Whiteness8Whiteness influences the aesthetic appeal of the finished banner, affecting the colours in the printed image. A brighter white gives colours extra ‘pop’ and added clarity to the non-printed areas of the banner, delivering a cleaner, more attractive visual effect. If your client is looking for a dazzling graphic, you might consider a ‘super-white’ banner material from the ImagePerfect range to give them the desired ‘wow’ factor.

With the location and application in mind, make sure you know whether the banner needs to offer a specific fire rating. Fire ratings are now a legal requirement for many environments, particularly those expecting a high concentration of people in a confined area, such as exhibitions and concerts.

These days, many banner substrates are available which have inherent fire retardant properties. Inevitably these additional features add cost, but with ImagePerfect the price differential is minimal. If you or your client are not sure which banner material to specify to ensure compliance, talk to the Spandex team who can walk you through the options.

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If your client has a strong environmental procurement policy, you may need to offer a PVC-free banner alternative. PVC-free banners use materials which make them biogradable and easier to recycle at the end of their life. Manufactured without chlorine, dioxin or plasticizer, they are ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 compliant. If you’ve used PVC-free materials in the past and didn’t like the look and feel or the way they handled, it’s time to take a look at the new generation of PVC-free options which now offer the aesthetics of plasticized products.

Environmental

Today’s clients are budget-conscious, however when making your material choice, you have to strike a fine balance between performance, aesthetic qualities and price. ImagePerfect banner materials are competitively priced, and our philosophy when compiling the range has always been to offer the best possible ratio of price to performance on every product.

It may be tempting to downgrade to a cheaper material on a job, but this could be a false economy if the outcome is a sub-standard job that needs to be reprinted because the print quality is below par, or if the installation fails and has to be repeated, costing you time, money, reputation and repeat orders.

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10Talk to the team at Spandex to help you find an ImagePerfect product that meets your brief and will achieve the best result. If necessary, use the knowledge from this guide - and from your conversations with us - to steer your client in an alternative direction to deliver a better outcome for them.

Better Banners Guide 7

ImagePerfect™

This ImagePerfect™ guide is an introduction into the factors that can influence choice of banner materials, designed to help you understand the differences between the banner products in the ImagePerfect™ range.

Our team of Spandex experts is on hand to give you tailored advice and help you create better banners.

Call Spandex on

1800 683 311

© Spandex 2014. All rights reserved. www.spandex.com

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