Big Picture - May 2018 - 26

Décor for More Business

BIG PICTURE

May 2018

Cayce, South Carolina-based MN Designs' (mndesignsinc.com) bread
and butter is vinyl, but owner Marsha Newman is always exploring ways
to expand her reach and meet her customers' needs, which is how her
business grew from offering banner material in the '90s to specializing in
wholesale signage supplies and digital printing of graphics and banners.
Newman - whose 10,000-square-foot facility is run by six employees - mostly prints wholesale for other sign shops. Following a visit
to SGIA Expo in 2017, Newman decided to replace her 6-year-old, UV
flatbed with a hybrid wide-format inkjet printer - an EFI H1625 LED
- to expand the variety of materials on which she can print.
Newman has found a niche in direct-to-substrate printing for the
décor market. She has recently provided hundreds of prints of
artwork on wood for a customer who then supplies the items for gift
shops to sell. She also frequently prints artwork on acrylic, canvas,
glass, and foamboard. Another recent direct-to-substrate project
included printing images of athletes in action onto glass panels that
were used in the fitness center of a local university.
"If it's flat, MN Designs can print it," Newman says. The options
for substrates with direct-to-substrate printing are vast - and
Newman admits she's having fun with it.
MN Designs printed a series of vintage maps of Charleston, South
Carolina, on Birch wood. "Printing these on wood has really been a
worthwhile project. They have a beautiful texture, and each piece of
wood is different. The texture of the wood even makes the water in
the image look like it has movement to it," Newman says.
Newman always had a love for art and considered studying it in
college, but was discouraged by a high school teacher's suggestion
that her only career choice would be an art teacher. Although she
eventually chose to earn a finance degree - and she worked as a
Federal Reserve Bank examiner before starting MN Designs 25 years
ago - her interest in art and creative endeavors remained.
Because of the improvements in digital printing quality, MN Designs
prints beautiful graphics and artwork every day. "Now, I'm around art
all the time. It's really come full circle for me," Newman says.

MN Designs
second-surface
printed this
photograph onto
the back of three
10 x 37-inch acrylic
pieces to be hung
side by side as wall
décor. The color
was printed first
and a white ink
was printed on top
of the color to
make the prints
translucent when
viewed through the
acrylic.

Marsha Newman seeks out colorful artwork to print
vibrant graphics on even the most basic rigid substrates.
This artwork was printed on vinyl to wrap the company's
breakroom microwave but when Newman saw the result,
she instead turned it into 48 x 64-inch artwork for the
office wall. The graphic was printed with the EFI H1625 LED
hybrid onto 1/2 -inch foamboard with a black edge cap finish.

The shop printed more than 100 24 x 32-inch vintage maps
of Charleston, South Carolina, that the customer supplied
to gift shops to sell as home décor. Because of the
variations in the natural 1/2 -inch-thick Birch wood, each
map is unique. The wood grain gives the water in the image
the appearance of motion, Newman says.

http://www.mndesignsinc.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Big Picture - May 2018