In more than 250 full-color photos, this book covers, in step-by-step format, the techniques used by the world's leading signmaking experts to fabricate the kinds of signs commercial signshops make every ...
Flexible-face signage is all around you. Here's how to make money with this product.
By Jennifer Flinchpaugh, Linda Kitchen
Pet rocks, disco and the Village People. These may be pop culture's most notable '70s-era contributions. But in the world of signage, one of the most significant products introduced during the flower-power decade was flexible-face fabric.
Since its inception, flexible-face fabric has been used in virtually all niches of the industry -- from cabinet signs, channel letters and banners, to billboards, truck graphics and Times Square spectaculars.
Despite its range of uses and nearly 30-year history, the product is still misunderstood by some signmakers. Many believe the fabric is only a material used by "the big boy" sign companies. But this is not necessarily true. Shops of all sizes can effectively use the product to make signs -- and more importantly, money.
To do so, it's helpful to understand just what flexible-face fabric is, when it's appropriate for a job, how to decorate and install it and how to market it.
Flex education
Most flexible-face material comprises a polyvinylchloride (PVC) surface attached to a scrim of woven nylon or polyester. Some manufacturers create the material by casting, which is the same process used to make certain pressure-sensitive, adhesive-backed film. Other manufacturers extrude the fabric using a high-temperature process to permanently bind the vinyl and scrim.
The material is offered in a range of thicknesses, tear-strengths and UV-resistance options. For example, fabric used in non-vertical applications on awnings typically needs greater UV resistance than fabric applied vertically on sign faces.
Certain materials are also created to accommodate specific decoration methods -- pressure-sensitive vinyl, digital imaging, painting, eradication and the like.
Flexible benefits
Flexible-face fabric was created as an alternative to rigid acrylic, polycarbonate and other rigid-plastic substrates. According to product manufacturers, one of the product's primary benefits is its imperviousness to vandalism.
"If you throw a beer bottle at a flexible-face sign, the bottle will bounce right off. If you throw it at a rigid-face sign, the acrylic will likely crack or shatter," says Brian Brooks, president, ABC Sign Products Inc. (Fort Collins, CO). Some fabrics also have coatings that allow spray-painted graffiti to be wiped off with thinner, he adds.
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