- What it is
- A kit of aluminium frame parts that bolts into a straight run, an L, a curve or a corner depending on how it is assembled, skinned front and back with tensioned panels. It is the difference between a backdrop bought for one show and a wall that becomes a different wall next year: the frame is the investment, the skins are printed to the panel sizes the frame produces, and a reconfiguration costs a new skin rather than a new stand. A step-and-repeat media wall is the same object carrying a logo pattern, built to be photographed rather than walked past.
- What it is printed on
Tensioned woven polyester skins printed by dye sublimation for a completely matt face — which is what a media wall needs, because a laminated film wall throws a camera flash straight back into the lens and ruins every photograph taken in front of it. Rigid infill panels are used where a shelf, a screen or a door has to be let into the wall. The cloth is not a sheet the caliper table holds; the specification that matters is the panel grid the frame produces.
- How it feels
- Closed up, a skinned wall is taut and matt and reads as a painted surface from a couple of paces. Along a join the two skins meet at a shallow shadow line a fingertip finds but an eye rarely does. The frame behind is cool and square, and the whole object is far lighter than it looks — which is the first thing anybody who lifts a section says out loud.
- What it suits
- Exhibition stands, press and launch backdrops, conference stages, showroom walls, and any programme that runs several events off one investment. A step-and-repeat pattern suits a camera at close range, where the logo has to repeat tightly enough that any crop of any photograph contains at least one whole one. It does not suit a single low-budget use, and a media wall does not suit a mark spaced generously — half the photographs will land in the gap between two logos.
- Lead time
- Standard turnaround is 7–14 working days. Installation, where it applies, is scheduled on top of that.
- The common mistake
- Scaling the step-and-repeat to the wall instead of to the crop. The logo grid has to be sized so that a head-and-shoulders photograph, taken close and off-centre, still contains one complete mark the right way up. A pattern that looks balanced on the flat artwork is always too large and too widely spaced in the photographs it exists to appear in. The other half of the mistake is forgetting how tall people are: nothing below about a metre and a half survives being stood in front of.
Print idea
Modular backdrop wall
A bolt-together aluminium wall skinned in tensioned fabric, assembled straight, curved or cornered from the same parts — and the step-and-repeat media wall built on the same frame for a camera.
Standard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
What modular backdrop wall is
A kit of aluminium frame parts that bolts into a straight run, an L, a curve or a corner depending on how it is assembled, skinned front and back with tensioned panels. It is the difference between a backdrop bought for one show and a wall that becomes a different wall next year: the frame is the investment, the skins are printed to the panel sizes the frame produces, and a reconfiguration costs a new skin rather than a new stand. A step-and-repeat media wall is the same object carrying a logo pattern, built to be photographed rather than walked past.
Tensioned woven polyester skins printed by dye sublimation for a completely matt face — which is what a media wall needs, because a laminated film wall throws a camera flash straight back into the lens and ruins every photograph taken in front of it. Rigid infill panels are used where a shelf, a screen or a door has to be let into the wall. The cloth is not a sheet the caliper table holds; the specification that matters is the panel grid the frame produces.
- The panel, drawn to its finished proportion.
- The aperture — what is still visible once the frame is closed. The standard silicone-edge profile takes 25 mm off every edge, drawn at the panel’s own scale.
- The silicone bead, sewn around the whole perimeter.
- The frame channel, in section. The bead seats in it and the edge of the print disappears.
The specification
Six fields, and the last one is the useful one.
The same six questions are answered for every entry in this section, in the same order, so two objects can be compared without reading two pages of prose. The mistake is stated last and stated plainly, because it is the one that costs a reprint and it is the reason this page is worth sending to a colleague.
Where this sits.
Every entry is indexed three ways, because a buyer arrives knowing the occasion, the object or the material and almost never all three.
- Application
- Material and effect
Also worth looking at
- Tensioned fabric backdropStandard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
- Wall muralsStandard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
- SEG fabric lightboxStandard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
- Curved and straight pop-up displayStandard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
- ExhibitionThe specification, and how it is quoted
- BackdropsThe specification, and how it is quoted
- Every print idea, indexed three waysThe section index
- The materials libraryCaliper, weight and what each finish costs
Send the specification for this, and it comes back quoted.
Every job is quoted from its specification — stock, quantity, sides, finish, size and deadline.
- Quantity
- Stock — or the feel you want, if you do not know the stock
- Sides printed
- Finish
- Flat and finished size
- The deadline
Artwork is welcome but not required to start. Email sales@ezprint.com.sg if you would rather attach files.