Metamark’s high performance digital vinyl with High Tack ‘MetaScape’ System was selected as the preferred media for an emergency helicopter project. Dave Caswell and co-director Nick Lees run Signhouse UK, which designs, makes, and installs sponsor-led graphics that help keep the Yorkshire Air Ambulance Airbus Helicopters aloft.
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 provided banners and other graphics initially and were 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, which is 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.
Caswell 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.
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