Any readers that visited Digital Printer’s Ipex stand have witnessed Curvorama, the innovative shell scheme concept that Venture Banners is offering as a trade service.

The Holy Grail of shell schemes, says Scott Conway of wide format trade printer Venture Banners; so easy to put up, ‘even I can do it’, says Digital Printer’s business development manager Chris Rushton!

These two gentlemen are talking about Curvorama, a lightweight, portable and adaptable display concept that enables a seamless picture without any gaps or joins visible between panels, even with curvy shapes. Venture Banners is offering the product to its trade print customers, giving them the prospect of a nice margin when offering it to their customers, who get ‘a fantastic shell scheme that they can put up themselves’, said Mr Conway. Digital Printer’s publisher, Whitmar Publications, used Curvorama for its recent Ipex stand, hence Mr Rushton’s endorsement.

Curvorama was invented by Fresco managing director Miles Harris, who sought to create a modular display system that offered a vast expanse of image, with no intrusive frames. It makes use of material manufacturer Soyang’s anti-curl SoFlat pull up banner media, coupled to flexible header and base units with magnetic ends. This, the company says, allows what looks on the face of it to be a standard roller banner display, to morph into a re-usable multi-drop, curvy and gapless graphics backdrop. The carriage weight and packed size are also a fraction of that of a usual popup. It is innovative enough to currently hold three patents.

‘We love the concept,’ Mr Conway continued. ‘We built one for ourselves, and then had a customer come to us that wanted to cover a shell scheme, and they loved it too. We’ve had nothing but good feedback about it. 

‘We’ve got a lot of trade customers that will benefit from this by offering it to their customers to make a healthy margin. Rather than printing and cutting it themselves – the cutting is very intricate, but we have a Zünd cutter – we can offer it as a service.’

It utilises a system of rods and hanging kit and feet, and achieves a seamless picture by having a 5mm overlap between printed panels. ‘It’s all in the finishing, which takes a long time without a digital cutter,’ he added.

Though Curvorama can come as a free standing product, Venture Banners expects that sales will be geared very much towards the shell scheme kit. ‘It’s a brilliant shell scheme,’ Mr Conway said, ‘while there are lots of similar things out there to the free standing one. This seamlessly covers the wall and looks spectacular.’

It is also cost effective in comparison with pop-ups, he claimed. There are a few alternatives in terms of the banner material that can be used with Curvorama, but the Whitmar Publications exhibition display made use of Soyang Europe’s SoFlat pull-up anti-curling banner material.

According to Soyang’s sales director Andrew Simmons, this material offers unique properties that benefit not only the Curvorama product, but its originally intended use too. ‘SoFlat hangs flat and stays flat,’ he said. ‘It’s a versatile media that can be printed with solvent, eco solvent and UV inks and so is compatible with most wide format printers.’

The frontlit version of the media is a 440 gsm laminate of polyester with a scrimless, printable PVC face. It is available in 50 metre rolls, in widths from 914 mm (ideal for the pull-up banner market) right up to 2.2 metres.

It has a ‘super smooth’ surface which is ideal for high resolution printing, according to Soyang, is lightweight, and does not require lamination, making it the perfect substrate for attaching to Curvorama’s header and base units which make up the core structure of the display.

Digital Printer’s Chris Rushton used the system for the first time at Ipex and after viewing an instruction video on YouTube found constructing the Curvorama display to be straightforward. He said: ‘It took me 45 minutes at the most to put it together. It just went together like a dream. It was also flexible enough to go around the electricity cables coming down from the ceiling, which is really important. If I can do put it together, then anyone can!’