Looking Down: The Emerging Use of Floor Graphics

In today’s world, it’s hard to get people to look up because our noses are constantly on our phones. Whether we’re checking social media channels, reading emails, or responding to text messages, the direction we’re usually looking is downward.

For someone who prints signage, this sounds like a nightmare, right? No one’s looking up, so how are they going to see your product?

The answer is simple: bring the graphics to the floor, and before you know it, you’ve got an opportunity to capture the unlimited potential of an untapped advertising market.

“It becomes a great advertising space, and you wouldn’t have thought that years ago,” says Eric Berger, the owner of Philadelphia-based Color Reflections. “The supermarkets have been doing it for years where they put little stickers in front of promos. They’re pushing some product — new toilet paper or new toothbrush or whatever. But I think now a lot of retailers are seeing the advantage of using the floor space.”

Floor graphics are a growing medium that we’ve seen more of as a result of the pandemic. With more businesses needing to let people know to stand six feet apart from one another in the checkout line, businesses like Color Reflections actually saw an uptick in sales thanks to the pandemic.

“We only had to shut down one day, and then we were deemed an essential business because we were helping the hospitals and restaurants with sneeze guards and floor graphics,” Berger says. “We also do a ton of work with Aramark. We did all of the six feet apart signs for their facilities, and we did a bunch for one of the big eyeglass chains. There’s a lot of retailers that needed these things in order to function.”

Floor graphics are a way for brands to help attract and retain business.

For Cowan Graphics, located in Edmonton, Canada, they were commissioned by a small business in Calgary’s downtown that wanted to try and take advantage of foot traffic. Owner Blaine Macmillan says they were hired to do sidewalk graphics for a small boutique coffee shop that wasn’t allowed to have dine-in business due to COVID-related restrictions.

“They wanted to stay open, and they were trying to generate ideas, but this entity was really challenged to try and find a way to direct foot traffic, and the innovative use of a sidewalk graphic was tremendously helpful to them and it helped to both launch and sustain their business,” MacMillan says.

More Than Just COVID Signage

Floor graphics can be used for everything from trade shows to movie sets, like this one for the television show Homeland.

However, just because floor graphics have been gaining popularity thanks to social distancing signage, that doesn’t mean there are no other ways to utilize them. Like the above example with Cowan, those sidewalk graphics were to remind pedestrians that the coffee shop was open and ready for in-coming carry-out business, not just to remind people to wear their masks and keep their distance.

Floor graphics can be used for trade shows, creating sets on major tv shows, and they can even be utilized for one-time events like weddings. In fact, Berger says that as mandates get lifted and events continue to come back, COVID signage is decreasing and the demand for event signage is growing.

“There will always be events where they need a temporary floor. So that business will continue to grow and with events coming back, that will continue to grow. The COVID stuff will not. That’s actually died dramatically,” Berger says.

In terms of celebrations like weddings and anniversaries, Macmillan says that in the past Cowan has done some large 50x50-ft. big circular graphics that would be placed on the dancefloor that had the bride and groom’s initials on them. Previously they also produced a large collage for a couple that showed their life together as part of an anniversary event.

For Color Reflections, one of their more interesting recent projects was helping with the set of the HBO series The Gilded Age.

“We printed to real wood for the Gilded Age, and you know it’s a period piece. So, we printed parquet flooring that they installed and that was printed onto Luan wood, and it looks exactly like it should for that period. So that one was really interesting,” Berger says. “And it’s not like we did just one room, we had to make these floors for an entire mansion, so it was thousands of square feet. It was pretty cool.”

Berger says that Color Reflections has also created floor graphics for the Super Bowl and the Drew Barrymore Show using G-floor, which is a thick and translucent portable flooring that can be semi-permanent or permanent depending on if you glue or weld it down.

Installation Obstacles

Like any other wide-format installation, installing floor graphics does have its fair share of challenges, and Berger says that it’s not for the faint of heart.

“The G-floor can be anywhere from 50 to 75 mils thick, and then you have to put a flood white on the back and it’s expensive, so if you have a problem where a printer craps out, you’re down a couple thousand dollars without even getting the job completed,” Berger says. “It’s very intricate. We’ve done a ton of parquet floors, but there’s a lot of detail there. If you’re doing something that’s 50 ft. long by 10 ft. wide, or maybe it’s 200x50 ft., where you’re matching up 10 ft. rolls along a run, to get those to line up again is not easy.”

Floor graphics can be an integrated part of a larger display, helping pull the design together.

Berger says that every job is an adventure and that basically, you don’t know what you’re going to get until you start printing. “If one side is off by just a couple mils in thickness as it goes through the machine it will skew ever so slightly. So, after you do 60 ft., it’ll start square at one end and it’ll be skewed just a little bit towards the end, so unless you have, really good installers or a forgiving image, it can be a nightmare.”

MacMillan also raised the point that weather, especially when doing outdoor sidewalk graphics, can also pose a problem for installations. If it’s raining, snowing, or sleeting, then everything gets put on hold and you’re left to rely on fallback plans.

Preparing for the Future

So as events, concerts, and crowded spaces emerge on the horizon, what are shops like Cowan and Color Reflections doing to prepare for the onslaught of business?

The answer is two-fold, they’re communicating, and they’re stocking up.

“I would say with us returning to the new normal and with events coming back I believe that the owners of these events are going to try to be that much more innovative and bring a unique product to the market,” MacMillan says. “Floors have not commonly been used historically, and I think that the smart ones are going to try and make use of that space as a new medium.”

“We try and market it on the web, we send email blasts that are specific to flooring and what can be done, because a lot of the designers or people who work on sets, they don’t know what can be done, they’re used to hand painting things or buying traditional vinyl flooring where they can now have custom,” Berger says.

For MacMillan, he says Cowan has upped their inventory in anticipation of demand, and like Color Reflections, Cowan is using the power of the great wide web to show people what they’re capable of doing.

Even with the challenges they pose, both MacMillan and Berger believe this medium is growing, and it is quickly going to gain more popularity as we begin to return to a sense of normalcy.

“I would say with us returning to the ‘new normal’ and with events coming back, I believe that the owners of these events are going to try to be that much more innovative and bring a unique product to the market,” MacMillan says. “The ability to use something on the floor seamlessly to invoke a reaction, I believe will [see this vertical] grow.”