Flagraphics’ Trade Secrets

Flagraphics (Somerville, MA) has fabricated banners, flags and similar soft-sided graphics for 27 years. According to Alicia Lafuente, the shop’s marketing director, banners represent 60% of its business.
Flagraphics recently helped Boston’s Seaport World Trade Center (WTC) undertake a significant rebranding with an 80-banner campaign of decorative and interpretive graphics. Arrowstreet, a Somerville-based, architectural and environmental-graphic-design firm, developed the original graphics, which it submitted as Illustrator EPS files.

Flagraphics printed the banners on either Sunbrella® fabric, 3M Controltac™ repositionable self-adhesive vinyl or Ultraflex mesh banner material. The designer specified the material, but durability served as the primary factor in the choice.

She said, “The Seaport WTC is right on the water, where there are obviously windy conditions. The building didn’t provide much of a shield to the banners, so we wanted to make sure the wind would easily pass through without tearing them.” Flagraphics printed all of the banners on an EFI-VUTEk 3360 solvent-ink printer and applied 3M’s 8519 luster-finish overlaminate on a Seal Ultra wide-format laminator.

Several of the banners feature 3-D, hand-rendered appliqués, which feature patterns or text drawn into one of the layers – these installations were printed on Sunbrella® fabrics. Flagraphics used a Roland plotter to plot the design on the paper. The remainder of the appliqué graphics were trimmed, sewn or traced by hand.