Off the Wall Signs and Graphics, a grand-format and specialty production and installation shop in Las Vegas, was formed in 2009 when CEO Rocky Faith added printing capabilities to his sign installation business. After working with other print shops, Faith felt the quality wasn’t as good as it should have been, which prompted him to expand his installation business to include the print production side. By bringing together both the production and installation, Faith could better control the quality and improve customer service. 

 

Off the Wall Signs and Graphics in Las Vegas did this building wrap using Arlon’s DPF 8000 vinyl and DPF 45 window perf. (All photos courtesy Off the Wall Signs and Graphics)

“I didn’t feel the quality was quite there with the final delivery, and, at the end of the day, it always ends up the installer’s fault,” Faith says. “So I decided to bring them under one roof, more or less just to have quality control going out the door.”

 

Since bringing together both operations, Faith has taken on many direct-to-substrate specialty applications, including building wraps, which has brought much attention to Off the Wall Signs. From the Flamingo, Luxor and Rio hotels, Off the Wall Signs has produced and installed many high-profile building wraps on the Las Vegas Strip along with other major projects, such as Comic-Con in San Diego. 

 

In Faith’s experience, timing is especially important when installing a building wrap. Vinyl substrates perform differently in various climates. For an area such as Las Vegas, there can be a drastic temperature change from morning to night. 

 

“Timing is everything when you’re laying graphics,” Faith says. “If you start a panel in the sun, you have to finish them all in the sun; if you start at night, you have to work on them all at night. In Vegas, you’ll have times where it’ll be 90 degrees in the afternoon and then 40 degrees at night. That’s a 50-degree change on the material. It’s going to want to do two different things.”

 

To get the most out of the building wraps, Off the Wall Signs first cleans the area where the graphics are to be placed. A clean surface is necessary to get the most out of your vinyl. Off the Wall also performs quarterly inspections. Wind can trap dirt underneath the vinyl if any of the corners are peeling, and the sun can deteriorate the vibrancy of the graphics. By frequently watching over the building wrap, these issues can be controlled, increasing the graphic’s shelf life. 

 

This wrap for Comic-Con in San Diego, completed in July 2011, was created with Arlon’s DPF 45WF window perf. Building wraps of this size require a great commitment from a sign and graphics shop.	“If you properly clean the building prior to installation and do a quarterly checkup on everything, building wraps really do last quite some time,” says Rocky Faith of Off the Wall Signs and Graphics.

“If you properly clean the building prior to installation and do a quarterly checkup on everything, building wraps really do last quite some time,” Faith says. “If there are certain sections where you can go in and do a color correction with samples that you print, then you can cut out that section and put up a new section, and that keeps the graphic looking new and vibrant.”

 

Perhaps the biggest challenge of taking on building wraps is the necessary time and dedication, Faith says. Given the massive scale of these projects, long nights and tight deadlines are the reality. If a sign shop isn’t willing to make that kind of commitment, building wraps may not be the best offering. 

 

When installing building wraps, it’s important to get the graphic panels finished in the same weather conditions in which they are started. Graphics installed partially at night and partially during the day run the risk of failure.

“We just did a project for the Dew Tour, and from the time that we went to print to the time it was supposed to be finished, we had worked for 24 hours,” Faith says. “We went from printing right into the installation, so I was up for about 32 hours during that job. You have to be dedicated to meeting those kinds of deadlines.”

 

To help market Off the Wall Signs’ building wraps, Faith and his team have compiled installation videos that are available on YouTube. Clients can easily access these videos to give them a better idea of what goes into a building wrap. Most clients don’t understand the exact process, Faith says, but with these videos, clients are quickly educated and offered a sense of transparency into the project. The videos shows how the prints are prepared as they come off the company’s multiple Rolands, including a 64" Versa UV LEJ-640 UV, a 54" SolJet Pro III XC-540 and a 104" AdvancedJet AJ-1000i.

 

This wrap project at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas features floor graphics using Arlon’s DPR 8000 and window graphics using Arlon’s DPF 45WF.

“It feeds into some of the curiosity people have about building wraps,” Faith says. “People almost assume building wraps are like one big sticker that goes up on a building, and they don’t really understand how building wraps actually are panels going up. On the videos you can see how the panels are being installed and all of the stages of how something big is actually composed of a lot of smaller parts.”

 

As Off the Wall Signs moves into the future, Faith expects building wraps will continue to play a large role in the shop’s success. The interest in building wraps is growing, and many clients are taking notice of Off the Wall Signs’ high quality, Faith says. 

 

“Every year it seems we pick up more and more business for building wraps,” Faith says. “It seems a lot more people are coming to us because they know we’re going to put the quality first, and I see building wraps as an area of our business that will grow.”