Authored by Brad Haupt, Regional Sales Manager, Drytac

If you’re looking for a captive audience for your advertising or branding, you can’t get much more focused than an elevator – exterior or interior. Your market may only be exposed to the display for a few seconds at a time – although possibly several times a day – which means it must have an immediate impact. But if you get it right, there’s incredible potential for engagement.

Elevators, or lifts, situated in environments such as airports, hotels, casinos and convention centres offer a great opportunity for semi-permanent advertising campaigns or displays. These spaces tend to be used by visitors who may be unfamiliar with the local area, so are ideal for displays advertising nearby restaurants or tourist attractions. Lifts in offices, colleges, shopping malls and other places used frequently – daily or weekly – are prime candidates for displays designed to be changed often. Ads for events, retail campaigns, holiday messages: these can all be switched up to grab people’s attention.

The outside of an elevator can have a bigger impact, as people wait for it to arrive. You can incorporate the moving doors into a creative idea, complement or contrast the colour schemes of the building, use it as wayfinding, and much more.

Whether your elevator display is long-term or destined for just a few days, it’s essential to use the right graphics media. Drytac SpotOn White for example, is ideal for short-term elevator graphics. This is a printable vinyl designed for use on smooth interior surfaces – such as the metal box of a lift – and offers up to three years’ durability indoors. It is compatible with UV, latex, solvent and eco-solvent printing technologies, and is available in clear or white, matte or gloss finishes, making it the ideal partner for colourful, impactful printed graphics.

However, the true beauty of SpotOn is its adhesive. Using Drytac’s innovative dot pattern design, the adhesive enables incredibly easy application of graphics to suitable surfaces – so easy, in fact, they can be installed by any non-professional, without special equipment. It doesn’t even require a squeegee to achieve bubble-free application. And, whether the display is in place for three months or three days, it can be removed simply, cleanly and with no residual mess. This allows employees to change out graphics when required, putting more control in the hands of local businesses.

Drytac’s SpotOn is also suitable for applications including wall murals, window graphics and exhibition displays, so an entire project can be printed using the same media. Step through the doors and take the elevator to explore a whole world of eye-catching graphics.

Authored by Steve Broad, Drytac’s European & Asia Sales Director

Vinyl is a standard sign and graphics material, with great results for a whole range of applications. But there is more than one type, and it’s important to choose the correct media for your project.

There are three categories of display vinyl: monomeric, polymeric and cast. Each are polyvinyl chloride – better known as PVC – of different sorts. To understand the difference between these three types, simply compare the PVC to baking a cake. The three types of PVC have very similar ingredients in their build; it’s just their quality and manufacturing processes which differentiate them.

Monomeric film is one of the cheapest forms of PVC available. It has the lowest cost of ingredients and it is stretched or rolled out to make it thin and printable – a little like using a rolling pin to roll out pie crust – in a process called calendering. All calendered PVC has a memory and wants to shrink back to its original state, but the additives in the chemical formulation prevent it from doing so. Typically, monomeric PVC will have an application lifespan of around three years, making it very cost effective for many short-term display projects.

Polymeric film is typically more expensive than monomeric. Its production uses the same kind of raw materials and calendering process as monomeric, but the ingredients of polymeric PVC are of a higher quality – hence this PVC has a longer life, of around five to seven years. It also can be used on a greater variety of surfaces than monomeric vinyl, such as those which are not flat or regular. In terms of cakes, polymeric films have higher quality ingredients than monomeric films.

The third type of PVC is called cast. Again, this uses the same type of raw materials as monomeric and polymeric, but the manufacture of cast uses the highest quality ingredients available. Additionally, the production process of cast PVC is not calendered; instead the PVC is poured into a casting tray where it is made flat from the beginning. Back to the analogy of baking: making cast PVC is like making a cake or brownies where you pour the ingredients into a cake tin, bake it, and it comes out the shape and size of the tin. This is the same way cast PVC is produced, so thanks to the high-quality ingredients and casting process, the PVC has no memory and will not shrink, allowing it to be formed or wrapped into many different shapes. The life of the product can therefore be in excess of seven years and is ideal for high-end applications such as vehicle wrapping for the auto industry. Think of it as a beautifully decorated cake for a special occasion.

While monomeric and polymeric PVC media are engineered with lower grades of ingredients, that’s not to say they aren’t ideal for a range of applications, such as  simple, short-term displays. All types of PVC vinyl are available in gloss and matte finishes and with white and clear face films, offering a multitude of options to create the perfect project. Get in touch with your Drytac representative to discover the best product for you.

Authored by Dennis Leblanc, Territory Manager, Eastern Canada + GTA; Drytac

It’s that time of year again: here in the northern hemisphere the leaves are falling from the trees, the nights are drawing in and the temperatures are dropping. While many of us would like to stay indoors with a warm drink, work goes on – and that means installing graphics in cold conditions.

As well as looking after ourselves in wintry weather, it’s important to keep in mind install temperatures when applying graphics outdoors in order to avoid failures. Typical install temperatures for pressure-sensitive materials rate at 5ºC (41ºF), but it’s essential that your chosen media, and its adhesive, can handle temperatures far below that.

Drytac has several solutions that are cold weather install rated down to -20ºC (-4ºF). In fact, there is an entire range of products, called Polar, designed specifically with low temperatures in mind – during installation, throughout the life of the graphic, and for its clean removal. The Drytac Polar range comprises a full selection of media for almost any graphics project need.

• Polar Grip
• Polar Premium North America
• Polar Dynamic Clear R
• Polar Smooth 150
• Polar Transit

In fact, Polar Transit (available in North America) is even used for NHL rink board advertising across the USA and Canada, demonstrating its durability in low temperatures during action-packed ice hockey games, just as much as for bus graphic applications.

However, as much as winter may seem to drag on, it’s also crucial to bear in mind the highest temperatures your graphics may have to endure; summer is never far away. Drytac has also tested its Polar products for warm-weather performance – including an unofficial but extreme experiment carried out on Polar Chrome by Jerry Hill, Vice President of Business Development at Drytac. In March 2019, Jerry rode from Richmond, VA to in Las Vegas, NV on a motorcycle adorned with specially printed decals on this new reflective film. During the 2,400-mile, 36-hour journey (and back again), Jerry and the decals suffered temperatures of -2ºC (28.5ºF) in the southern Colorado mountains and 44ºC (112ºF) in Death Valley – and all survived.

The success of an application project lies in the ideal combination of film, laminate if necessary, and adhesive. Reach out to your Drytac adhesive science specialist for the right adhesive solution to meet your install needs.