Large Out­door Sig­nage: When going big deliv­ers huge value.

Flex Face Signs and How They Work

“Flex Face” (also known as a ​“skin”) is a ten­sioned, flex­i­ble PVC (vinyl) ban­ner sub­strate that is stretched across a frame sys­tem, like a drum is stretched. Often with min­i­mal fram­ing and excel­lent illumination.

How a Hawk­eye came to be.

Here’s the Chal­lenge: The orig­i­nal design was a 22’high x 36’wide reverse chan­nel halo illu­mi­nat­ed (back­lit) alu­minum sign. Our con­cern was seam­ing lim­i­ta­tions using alu­minum fac­ing pieces. Due to the size of the over­all logo, it’s impos­si­ble to have a sin­gle sheet of alu­minum in the size nec­es­sary to make the logo and have a thought­ful bud­get. Seam­ing the alu­minum was the like­ly solu­tion, how­ev­er, that left a poten­tial for light to leak between the seams of the face using that con­struc­tion method.

Here’s the Solu­tion: Our team brought up using flex face for halo options as that would allow for a one-piece face con­struc­tion. Dur­ing those dis­cus­sions, face illu­mi­na­tion was brought up. That evolved into the dual film and using it on flex face and that’s where we land­ed. The size did not end up chang­ing, still 22’x36’ but the entire con­struc­tion and illu­mi­na­tion of the sign did. 

This new man­u­fac­tur­ing solu­tion of the Hawk­eye also drove the over­all design of the Kin­nick Sta­di­um let­ters on the press box as well. It was impor­tant that these let­ters com­ple­ment the Hawk­eye. While they don’t use a flex face tech­nique, they are face illu­mi­nat­ed to match the Hawk­eye. Since they aren’t as large, we could use lex­an on the faces with dual film to achieve black dur­ing the day and white at night.

Video: Flex Face Hawk­eye, From Man­u­fac­tur­ing to Install

6 Ben­e­fits of Flex Face for Out­door Signage:

1. Abil­i­ty to go BIG with design. PVC print­ing allows larg­er siz­ing than acrylic or com­pos­ite materials.
2. Lighter weight mate­ri­als for large projects make for a smoother install. Few­er peo­ple, less equip­ment, less time.
3. Faster to man­u­fac­ture which results in quick­er turn­around time. 
4. A more change­able option. Eas­i­er to print a new graph­ic and install on-site than acrylic or alu­minum would be.
5. Illu­mi­na­tion options. The entire face illu­mi­nates nice­ly for night­time vis­i­bil­i­ty (like this Hawk­eye) OR using an opaque face mate­r­i­al, back­light­ing with a stand­off can be a nice halo illu­mi­nat­ed look. 
6. Qual­i­ty look for the bud­get. Often flex face signs look no dif­fer­ent than a heav­ier, more high­ly engi­neered ($$) alu­minum sign. But also looks nicer and is more durable than cheap­er acrylic faced signs. 

If any of these ben­e­fits sound good to you, let a Flex Face sign be part of the conversation.

Start a con­ver­sa­tion with one of our sig­nage experts today.