Details/Credits
Roland DG was about to launch the second generation of their flagship VG printer/cutter. A device that was hotly anticipated in the wide-format world and came with a color range that outperformed its competitors and even some RGB colorspaces. For it’s debut at International Sign Expo 2019, we wanted a display that showed off what the machine can do and we wanted to fabricate the graphics on the VG2 itself. The stage and machine turned heads and we learned a lot from the process.
Company: Roland DGA Corp.
Creative Director: Ed Navarro
Art Direction/Graphic Design: Julian Arellano
Fabrication: Lane Designs, Bryan Ballreich
Completed artwork diagram of the VG2 stage wall and floor
We wanted the graphic to be seamless from floor to wall, so design was done at 1/4 scale first. Most Roland DGA projects required insane specs and scrutiny on a 150-300 dpi graphic on what’s essentially a billboard having to be printed in segments of 54″ vinyl a common size in print material. We ended up using what we learned here for content to teach other people how to design for large scale graphics on wide-format.
Print file for direct UV printing of the polycarb sign.
We used second-surface printing to give more elements for the LED lighting to pick up, so the design was flipped before it was printed. The difficult part here was diffusing and breaking up “misting” gradients so they didn’t print like a solid blob, we used tricks from screen printing as a work around.
