In one of their most challenging projects to date, Signs Express (Sheffield) was honoured to work with renowned artist Florence Blanchard, perfectly recreating her latest ‘Particles’ piece across the window frontage of the Millennium Gallery in Sheffield.

Taken from a painted art piece, the design needed to be completely vectored by the sign making team in to its own individual sections as it was imperative a variety of textures and effects were used across the window, creating a dynamic and engaging finish. The design also needed to be scaled across the high profile entrance.

A variety of vinyls were used from translucent, solid coloured, fluorescents and double sided gold vinyl, with each section offering an insight into the depth of colour and texture, helping to recreate the overall effect of the piece.

Signs Express centre owner Steve Morris said, “By spending the extra time in vectorising the entire piece, we were able to split each individual section to use the wide variety of vinyls and help the artist perfectly recreate their design on a large scale. Using a mixture of solid colours and translucent vinyl, along with other specialist products, provides a wonderful reflection from the inside of the building as well as a striking design from the outside.

The project was particularly complicated because we couldn’t put any colour section on at one time because they were far too large.

We had to create numerous registration marks to build up a background framework into which we could then insert and build up the colours – always moving in the same direction away from the origin. We’re really proud to have been involved.”

The sign making team in Sheffield have worked with the Millennium Galleries for a number of years and so were acutely aware of the importance of the installation at such a high profile location. They also understood the opportunities available from such a wide open window space. Planning was crucially important and so the team created a detailed number plan to ensure that the meticulous design was locked in to place.

Artist Florence Blanchard said, “It is the first time I have worked with vinyl and I am really happy with it. A big thank you to everyone involved at Millennium gallery and Signs Express (Sheffield) for making it happen.”