The London Edition x The Earth Issue

We were commissioned by the London Edition Hotel to produce and install this beautiful set of entrance graphics. The piece was for their collaboration with The Earth Issue and coincided with #earthweeklondon. The illustration is by the very talented  Svabhu Kohli.

We had previously worked with the 5-star hotel on another entrance cube graphic, celebrating Pride.

The glass entrance cube was produced in two parts, both to a clear, removable vinyl. This meant the graphics could easily be removed after the duration of the installation, which was only for a matter of weeks.

Part one was printed on a UV Vutek printer using white ink, and part two on a latex printer. As much as possible, and especially because of the subject matter, the production was produced using eco-friendly latex inks. You can read more about our environmental policy here, and the possibilities for eco print and production  here.

The UV Vutek printer was used to produce the opaque areas including the coral, whale, and jellyfish. The process involved a white layer of ink as a background for the characters, overlaid with a full colour CMYK layer. The transparent areas, the sky, and sea were produced using the latex process.

The sections were comped together expertly on site during the installation by our fitters. A professional installation is just as important as high-quality print production. There’s no point having the graphics applied sub-standard, where bubbles or seams between the graphic panels could be visible, this would ultimately impact on the piece the public sees. Fitting professionally is always our recommendation and policy. Not that this was a consideration here, but it’s worth hiring us to  install the graphics for you unless you’re skilled and experienced in the application process.

An important element to the piece’s successful production was to make sure the individual glass panels of the cube were measured correctly. This meant that when we printed the panels we could trim the graphics to fit the position of the glass exactly. If we have printed the graphics so they were not aligned with the glass there would likely have been multiple overlapped panels, along with the joins of the glass visible, making the installation unsightly. Fortunately, we know better and discussed this right at the start of the project during a site visit to measure up and plan for the work ahead.

Once the graphics had been installed representations of shells and barnacles were added to the surface of the glass for an added three-dimensional quality to the installation.

It’s the little touches and care that makes a project come to life and be the best it can be out in the world. The welfare of the earth is an important issue to address after all.