DESIGNING PICTURE FLAP ART

Think Outside the Box

Selecting art is the crucial first step when it comes to building your custom Picture Flap display. All of our clients finalize the size of their Picture Flap – mainly the number of modules and their formation –during the Sales process. Smaller signs are typically 3x4 or 3x5. Our modules are about 12x12 inches so this translates directly to overall sizes of 3x4 feet or 3x5 feet. Our largest Picture Flap to date is 18 feet long!

Our clients have a few image ideas or at least an art concept in mind during the Sales process, which helps inform the final size of their Picture Flap. The amazing Sales team at Oat Foundry puts together incredible, realistic renders for all of our clients to help them visualize their custom sign. This is a great starting point for selecting the art, but now it’s time to lock in twenty artboards with our Production team.

The most important thing to note upfront is that the images or graphics must be high resolution for printing. This isn’t your standard home printer. If one image is spread across your whole sign, then this image will be printed across the entire length and width of your sign. If your sign is 6x10 modules, that means your image will have to stretch to 6 feet x 10 feet for printing, without looking pixelated. That’s a lot of DPI (dots per inch). A good rule of thumb is to have about 2000 x 2000 pixels, per module.

While each Picture Flap display has twenty artboards, our Art team highly recommends having more than twenty images on hand. Having forty to sixty images available is ideal – this can include photographs, logos, scans, graphics, vectors, branding, and more. To make the most of your sign, try creating artboards with one image per module. Or design a layout where half your sign has one photo and the other half has a large logo or some branding. Your final sign will have more variety in what you’ll be able to show.

Check out the example set of artboards to the right.

Once your art is locked in, you can sit back and relax while we complete your made-to-order Picture Flap display. Our in-house Art team runs your twenty artboards through our proprietary image-splitting software. Picture Flap has what’s called a bezel – the spacing between the modules where the sheet metal is visible. All art is cropped to these dimensions, per module, and the layout of your sign.

When the artwork is approved, we digitally print the files on a large-scale printer. This process can take several weeks. During this time, the Production team builds out all of the hardware for the sign. The printed flaps are easily inserted into the sign once they’re ready. Then the sign ships to you for installation.

We can’t wait to see what you design!

Sarah Van Bemmel Creative Director