Eco-Friend­ly Ver­ti­graph­ics Ver­ti­cal Wall Print­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Enhances Heart­land Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege Campus

Known for its exten­sive sus­tain­abil­i­ty and envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship pro­grams, includ­ing a cam­pus wind tur­bine that gen­er­ates 50 per­cent of its elec­tric­i­ty, Heart­land Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege required an eco-friend­ly inte­ri­or brand­ing solu­tion for its new­ly con­struct­ed Agri­cul­ture Com­plex on its Nor­mal, Illi­nois campus.

Heartland’s new agri­cul­ture build­ing was com­plet­ed in 2024. The 29,500-square-foot com­plex is home to the school’s agri­cul­ture edu­ca­tion and train­ing pro­grams. With that much space, there was a large wall just beg­ging for a mur­al. In fact, the wall Heart­land want­ed cov­ered was 8’x33’. 

Tra­di­tion­al vinyl wall wraps can present recur­ring chal­lenges for facil­i­ty man­agers, includ­ing peel­ing edges, off-gassing, bub­bling, and inten­sive wall prepa­ra­tion. Search­ing for an alter­na­tive, Heart­land turned to Ver­ti­graph­ics.

Heartland Vertigraphics Partial Wall Standard Image Size

The Design Chal­lenge: Trans­form­ing Low-Res­o­lu­tion Archives Into Large-For­mat Art

The Heart­land team had col­lect­ed an archive of his­tor­i­cal pho­tographs chron­i­cling region­al farm­ing tra­di­tions through­out McLean Coun­ty, where the col­lege is locat­ed. Lat­i­tude pro­duc­tion design­er Tim Brown got to work arrang­ing them into a large dis­play, adding sepia tones across the design that would accen­tu­ate the his­tor­i­cal look of the mur­al while cre­at­ing cohe­sion across assets.

The pho­tos pro­vid­ed were of var­i­ous qual­i­ty. High-res­o­lu­tion files were iso­lat­ed and scaled for large-for­mat enlarge­ment, while low­er-res­o­lu­tion archival assets were strate­gi­cal­ly styled at small­er sizes to pre­serve visu­al clarity.

Using high-def­i­n­i­tion CMYK inks, the Ver­ti­graph­ics ver­ti­cal wall print­er native­ly pro­duced gra­di­ents and drop shad­ows direct­ly onto the wall’s sur­face at1200 DPI, giv­ing a flat dry­wall can­vas strik­ing archi­tec­tur­al depth.

The Instal­la­tion Process: Over­com­ing On-Site Obstacles

Hamza Daour, Direc­tor of Inno­va­tion, Inclu­sion + Cul­ture, and chief engi­neer of Ver­ti­graph­ics, per­son­al­ly over­saw the mur­al instal­la­tion. With the wall at 33 feet in length, it was the longest Ver­ti­graph­ics project to date. Here’s how the mas­sive mur­al came to life:

  1. Pre-Pro­duc­tion.
    Because of the mas­sive 33-foot span, the dig­i­tal mur­al design was divid­ed into two pre­cise sec­tions for a two-day instal­la­tion process.
  2. Day One Print­ing & Align­ment Mask­ing.
    We exe­cut­ed the first sec­tion with our Ver­ti­graph­ics ver­ti­cal wall print­er. At the end of the day, the print­ed edge was masked with phys­i­cal vinyl guides to guar­an­tee an exact align­ment point for the fol­low­ing morning.
  3. Field Cor­rec­tion.
    Dur­ing instal­la­tion, laser sen­sors revealed that the facil­i­ty wall was not ver­ti­cal­ly lev­el, lean­ing back by 22 mil­lime­ters at the top. With the speci­fici­ty of the Ver­ti­graph­ics tech­nol­o­gy, even small dis­crep­an­cies can alter the look of a fin­ished prod­uct. A quick art­work adjust­ment skewed the mur­al to match the approved design and pre­vent distortion.
  4. Seam­less Day Two Com­ple­tion.
    We fin­ished the sec­ond-half print sequence with Ver­ti­graph­ics, blend­ing seam­less­ly with the day-one bound­ary to form a sin­gle 33’ his­tor­i­cal installation.
Heartland Vertigraphics History Wall

Key Ben­e­fits of Ver­ti­graph­ics Over Tra­di­tion­al Vinyl

  • Zero-waste sub­strate appli­ca­tion: Inks are cured direct­ly onto the wall sur­face, elim­i­nat­ing plas­tic vinyl back­ing and adhe­sive waste.
  • Cor­rec­tion around struc­tur­al con­straints: The com­put­er-guid­ed print­ing appa­ra­tus adapts dynam­i­cal­ly to minor archi­tec­tur­al realign­ments and minor wall variances.
  • Unmatched longevi­ty: Direct-to-wall appli­ca­tion pre­vents the peel­ing, scratch­ing, and edge-lift com­mon in high-traf­fic cam­pus corridors.

See­ing Is Believing

The mar­ket­ing team at Heart­land over­sees the design of all cam­pus envi­ron­ments. In the past, they have had chal­lenges with vinyl wall graph­ics. After see­ing this mur­al installed with ver­ti­cal print­ing tech­nol­o­gy, they see more oppor­tu­ni­ties for Ver­ti­graph­ics through­out the school. 

Heart­land spread the word across cam­pus about the new mur­al, mak­ing Ver­ti­graph­ics the talk of the col­lege. By using inno­v­a­tive, envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly print­ing tech­niques, Heart­land was able to pay homage to their past and show their com­mit­ment to sustainability.

Have Ques­tions About This Project? Reach out to our tech­nol­o­gy spe­cial­ists direct­ly at connect@​latitudesignage.​com.

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