Graphics House Imaging was proud to partner with SMI Sign Systems, 2387 Lewis Ave., Rockville, MD to produce a 12’ tall x 28’ wide digitally printed banner for the Canadian Embassy in Washington DC. The embassy was promoting an event in their art gallery from May 1st to August 29th 2008. The embassy was featuring “50 Years of American Photojournalism: 1939-1989” in their art gallery and they wanted to promote the event to the general public. They were utilizing two vintage photo images in their promotion; Marilyn Monroe and Mohammed Ali.


There were numerous challenges to the job; how to inform the general public in a cost-effective manner, where on-premise could they advertise the event and how to generate high visibility and excitement for the event were identified as the three primary objectives. It was determined that they would feature an underwater photo of a young and athletic looking Mohammed Ali in a boxing pose standing on the bottom of a swimming pool totally submerged under water, it was the high-impact photo they were looking for, now how to display it for BIG impact?


It was determined that a digitally printed banner would be a BIG and cost-effective solution, but now the question of how and where to display the banner needed to be resolved. The embassy has large triangular concrete vertical columns right in front of their building so we determined that would be a good location to display a banner. We had to then determine a method of attachment that would not damage the columns and also be somewhat “invisible” to the viewer.

We produced a large 12’ tall x 28’ wide banner that was digitally printed on 13oz. reinforced Duraflex vinyl banner material. The banner was printed with a state-of-the-art 16’ wide HP Scitex XL1500 solvent inkjet printer to produce the outdoor durable print directly on the vinyl banner material. The print was continuous but was sectioned into three separate areas that would match up with the width of each flat side of the triangular column. There was 1” wide nylon webbing reinforcement thermally welded into the 2” wide hems of the banner to insure additional strength and abrasion resistance around the entire perimeter of the banner.

Now we had to determine a method of installing the banner on one of the columns in front of the embassy. Installation had to be somewhat simple and direct but the embassy did not want to damage the column with lags or fasteners drilled directly into the column. To complicate the installation, they needed the banner to stay snug and secure against the column even though it was outdoors in rather windy conditions. The solution was to produce the banner so that it could be tightly wrapped around all three sides of the column but still leave about a 3” – 4” gap at the back of the column where the two ends of the banner came together. These two leading edges of the banner were grommeted every 12” so they could be “laced” together and pulled tight around the column to insure a tight and secure installation around the column without any penetration into the column itself.

The project was a success, the promotion worked great and the banner stayed up perfectly for the duration of the exhibit. In fact, it all worked so well that the embassy has used this method to promote two other events in the same manner. We anticipate that we will be producing additional banners for future embassy events and look forward to our continued partnership with SMI Signs Systems on this and other future projects.