The Newest Trend That's Off The Wall

Looking at the big picture

Who needs digital wall art? Virtually anyone who creates large visual messages that change frequently… or anyone who wants big images to build atmosphere and enhance the customer experience. “We’re seeing the preponderance of wall coverings used in commercial installations—industries like health care, restaurants, education, hospitality, corporations and retail,” says Rudy Herrera, wall décor business development manager for HP. 

Here are some strategies for “covering” a few of these markets: 

Restaurants: There’s a transformation going on in restaurants. Research shows that when diners are more engaged with décor, they tend to dine more often, stay longer, and order higher-priced items. Wall art can keep a restaurant fresh with seasonal changes and promotional messages.

Health care: Strong competition in this market has led to branding strategies with a focus on atmosphere: Filling the cold white walls of waiting rooms and common areas with friendly wallcoverings can keep kids engaged and have a calming effect. Wall art is also appearing in hospital cafeterias to create a more branded restaurant feel.

Corporate offices: Many offices are doing away with cubicles, so they’re left with large open spaces. Rather than have blank walls, designers are employing wall art in lobbies and other common areas to infuse corporate personality and support branding messages.

Retail: Matching colors with lipstick shades or handbags is a key direction for stores… and with the emerging trend of pop-up stores, so are quick installations. Print buyers are looking for high quality printing that can be installed fast enough to keep up with ever changing retail displays. When Hybrid Design created a store display for the launch of a Nike product, they turned to wall art, and custom-designed wallcoverings that coordinate with the new Nike line. Dora Drimalas, partner at Hybrid, says, “Wall art is a cost-effective way to round out a complete marketing program and create a specific space that belongs to the product being showcased. It’s fast, it’s easy to install, and it’s easy to dismantle.” 

Personalized galleries

The wall art trend isn’t limited to commercial projects. “We’re also seeing growth in the residential market. Consumers are looking beyond photo books for ways to showcase their prints and design their home interiors. From covering walls  to smaller framed canvas prints, there’s a growing trend,” says Herrera. 

Flavor Paper, a company known for its large silkscreened and digital wall covering installations, has designed walls for not only five-star hotels and restaurants, but also for high-end show houses and celebrity homes. Companies like Persnickety Prints are seeing demand for smaller wall art options like framed canvases (digitally printed canvases stretched over wooden frames, also known as gallery wraps). “We work with many graphic designers,” says Persnickety Prints’ founder Chari Pack. “We print all types of creative digital wall art for Etsy store owners and digital designers. Framed canvases are easy to print, produce, and ship,” 

Adding digital wall art to your business

Most print shops have large-format equipment that can produce digital wall art. Equipment that produces odorless prints with no hazardous air pollutants is very important to maintain a good indoor environment. Print shops can meet environmental criteria with HP Latex Inks, which produce odorless prints that achieve best-in-class indoor air-quality certifications. Prints from HP Latex Inks are GREENGUARD Children & Schools Certified and meet AgBB criteria to help you meet environmental requirements. 

Maximum output size for wall coverings is 54 in., as that tends to be the widest size an average person can hold when installing. To make digital wall art an easy introduction into print shop services, HP has created the HP WallArt Solution, a software tool that provides realistic visualizations with precise room details to view and modify graphics and manage image quality and scaling. This cloud-based software makes it easy to share a layout with a customer. Once the customer approves the layout, the system can produce “RIP-ready” PDFs of panels that install quickly. 

Tips for succeeding with Digital Wall Art
HP’s Rudy Herrera offers these tips for adding digital wall art to your service offering: 

• Assign an internal lead to focus on the market and develop a plan specific to it. Create a portfolio of examples.
• Identify your prospects and set up a schedule. Top opportunities: restaurants, health care, corporate offices and retail.
• Have an open house to showcase your digital art capabilities. Consider adding wall art to your own shop.
• Use large-format technology with the environment in mind to go after this opportunity. Install the necessary software to help make it an easy implementation.