- What it is
- A shallow aluminium box holding an LED array behind a diffuser, with a printed woven panel tensioned across its face. The panel is finished with a thin silicone strip sewn around its perimeter — the silicone edge graphic the initials stand for — and that strip is pushed by hand into a groove running the inside of the extrusion. What you get is a lit surface with no visible fixing, no frame lip sitting over the artwork and no lamp grid showing through. The frame is the asset and it stays; the skin comes off, folds into a bag and is replaced when the message changes.
- What it is printed on
Woven polyester made for backlighting — a tighter, heavier cloth than a front-lit tension fabric, often carrying a blockout layer so light travels through the weave without bleeding sideways from one colour into its neighbour. It is printed by dye sublimation, so the colour is gassed into the fibre rather than laid on top of it and there is no ink film to crack along a fold. It is not a sheet, so the caliper table holds no entry for it; the specification that matters is the cloth’s opacity and the finished panel size.
- How it feels
- Dry and faintly grainy, with noticeably more body than a front-lit banner cloth — closer to a heavy shirt than to a sheet. Off the frame it folds without taking a permanent crease. On the frame it is drum-tight: press it and it gives about as much as a stretched canvas, then springs flat again with a soft thump.
- What it suits
- Shell-scheme stands that have to hold their own beside neighbours with bigger budgets, retail bay ends, reception walls, and any position lit only by a hall’s overhead grid, where an unlit graphic goes grey by mid-morning. Backlighting is the single largest step up in perceived quality available on a small stand. It does not suit fine reversed type, which glares when the light comes from behind it, and it does not suit deep, moody imagery — light through cloth lifts everything a step, so dark tones read muddy rather than rich.
- Lead time
- Standard turnaround is 7–14 working days. Installation, where it applies, is scheduled on top of that.
- The common mistake
- Sending the front-lit artwork. A file built to be seen by reflected light is too dark and too contrasted once light passes through it: solids flatten, shadow detail closes up, and pale tints burn out to nothing. Backlit artwork is built lighter and flatter on purpose. The other half of the same mistake is designing to the frame size rather than to the aperture, so the logo ends up inside the extrusion where nobody will ever see it.
Print idea
SEG fabric lightbox
A backlit aluminium frame with a woven polyester graphic tensioned into it by a sewn silicone edge, so the panel glows evenly, the fixings vanish and the frame outlives every graphic it carries.
Standard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
What seg fabric lightbox is
A shallow aluminium box holding an LED array behind a diffuser, with a printed woven panel tensioned across its face. The panel is finished with a thin silicone strip sewn around its perimeter — the silicone edge graphic the initials stand for — and that strip is pushed by hand into a groove running the inside of the extrusion. What you get is a lit surface with no visible fixing, no frame lip sitting over the artwork and no lamp grid showing through. The frame is the asset and it stays; the skin comes off, folds into a bag and is replaced when the message changes.
Woven polyester made for backlighting — a tighter, heavier cloth than a front-lit tension fabric, often carrying a blockout layer so light travels through the weave without bleeding sideways from one colour into its neighbour. It is printed by dye sublimation, so the colour is gassed into the fibre rather than laid on top of it and there is no ink film to crack along a fold. It is not a sheet, so the caliper table holds no entry for it; the specification that matters is the cloth’s opacity and the finished panel size.
- 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 light, behind the cloth. Density behaves differently when it is transmitted rather than reflected.
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.
- Material and effect
Also worth looking at
- Tensioned fabric backdropStandard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
- Backlit lightbox graphicsStandard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
- Modular backdrop wallStandard turnaround is 7–14 working days.
- Modular tower and counterStandard 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.