Are your business hours on your window?

Updating business hours is a snap when using custom cut vinyl lettering.  Did you know that we can provide lettering with the adhesive on the front or back of the lettering?  This is a big deal when you live in cold weather areas such as our great state of Minnesota. 

When the outside temps get below 40°f pressure sensitive vinyls can be tricky to apply, not to mention most manufacture quit standing behind their products under the sub 40°f mark at installation.  The problem is that the adhesive just does not get a good bond.

This effects window lettering a great deal in the winter time. To remedy this issue, we recommend installing lettering on the inside of windows, with a front adhesive, as oposed to installing on the outside of your glass door or window.  Most of the times this will work.  Where we run into issues is with strong window tinting.  If that is the case then we need to look at a few other tricks up our sleeves that can remedy the situation.

All-in-all store hours are are a simply solution to inform your customers 24/7/365 when you will be open, or not, for business.  Updating for seasonal hours is super simple too!


Commissioned photography

Today we completed a large commissioned fine art photography project. Pictured here we are hanging the last of 13 framed pictures that complete a rather large conference room.

Not only did we conceptualize the project theme, we took the pictured, processed, printed, framed and installed all the work.

Ranger 620 boat wrap

Here is a great shot of our installer working on a ranger 620 for one of our professional Walleye angler clients this past week.

Boat like this get a bit tricky and are not your standard run of the mill wrap.  On this particular make and model, the manufacture requires that the built in Comanche stripping is illustrated on the wrap surface.  Given the strips and the angle of the boat hull, producing these stripes accurately requires some thinking.

Wrapping the Ranger 620 the right way involves getting a scaled computer template of the boat. The key is to get all those curves and shapes converted to 2 dimensional shapes. If you plan to try this, don't bother asking a manufacture for there proprietary designs.  The only way to really do this type of wrap right is to pattern it out yourself.

We won't bore you with the process of how we template out a boat like this.  Let's just say that after about 8-10 hours of work we finally have a pretty darn good system for wrapping a Ranger 620 - the right way.

Pictured below is a Ranger 620 wrap from a few years ago.  We did not do the wrap.  Our team only produced the design, a pretty cool one too!  The client was all of a sudden in a predicament and needed his wrap done ASAP and for a revised budget that we just could not compete with.  The client made a decision to have his boat wrapped ASAP at another shop.  As you can see from the picture, the wrap is starting to bubble.  These are only a few of the bubbles.  Not only were there more bubbles, but wrinkles, poor seams, and even graphic images that look one way on the port side and another on the starboard.

At the end of the season, the client decided to remove his wrap, to his horror he notice cut marks all across his boat.  Some cuts so deep they penetrated the gel-coating.  The boat required several thousands in  repairs to get  fixed. 

Sure he saved a few bucks and time on the front end, but as you can see it was not worth it.  We wrap boats the right way.  We are not the cheapest and don't feel we are the most expensive either.  What you get from Big Idea is what you pay for, a quality wrap.

If you follow Professional Walleye Fishing you will most likely have no problem spotting Mr Preissner and team (Quality Flow) on the water during the 2013 season.



Hats off to our Veterans

Thank you.

Back on track

Well we have been a bit off on our Blog posts this fall but are now happy to say we are back on track.

Pictured here is a cool shot of one of our photographer's on location during a shoot this past week.  The assignment is for a fine art photography project we are working on.  Though much of our work centers around some sort of sign or printed products, it is always exciting to get out of the shop and venture afield on creative photo shoots.

Our photography projects vary a bit including fine art, product, and corporate portrait as the front runners.  Fine art  photography includes our commissioned work, some of our company retail & stock photo work and our photographer's personal stock work.

Our product photography is just that, projects of client products.  The images are usually used in web applications such as websites, social media, blogs, etc.  The images are also used in client brochures, literature and on promotional or display signage. The subject matter we have shot ranges from a beer bottle to aluminum siding and a bunch of other interesting stuff in between.

The corporate portrait aspect of our work encompasses all the angles used to help "show" a business or event. To better illustrate this kind of work it is almost easier to list the types of projects we have done.  Below is a list from this past year of some of the project we have been a part of:

1. A few Non-Profit fundraising and project events
2. Corporate party/event with over 800 attendees
3. Commissioned fine art conference room pictures
4. Corporate Holiday card
6. Musician shoot for CD cover
7. stock photo shoot for a brewery
8. ground breaking ceremony
9. trucking fleet documentation
10. Trial exhibit photos

As you can see, our photography services cut a pretty wide swath in the picture taking category.  This, along with our unique design, makes Big Idea a pretty well rounded creative choice.