What Is Vinyl Printing & How Can I Best Use It?
Vinyl printing is the term used to describe printing using a vinyl material and its uses are wide and varied such as creating large scale vinyl stickers to use as ambient marketing materials. Think floor stickers, window stickers, magnetic vinyl signs and wall signage.
We specialise in printing vinyl graphics for use in retail and marketing. We have found these large-format sticky labels to work beautifully for both indoor and outdoor signage. Using wide-format inkjet printers, we are able to print imagery, logos, and illustrations onto large rolls of sticky-backed vinyl plastic.
Vinyl transfer printing is where vinyl is machine cut and heat transferred onto items to create a bespoke look. We use this for our laptop printing.
How Do You Apply A Vinyl Graphic?
With care…
It is important to store the vinyl graphic properly so don’t let it get wet or frozen or melted by heat. keep it somewhere dry and safe and give it a good dust off with a microfibre cloth before you apply it. A clean will stop dirt and dust from getting onto the sticky side and causing bubbles.
Clean the surface you are applying the graphic to.
Once you and the surface are ready, remove the backing and apply slowly using a squeegee at a 45-degree angle. Glide over the graphic and press firmly. You can apply wet using an application fluid or dry, the choice is yours.
No matter how professional you are with your application, you can still get bubbles and wrinkles. If bubbles appear after a few days, don’t worry, this sometimes happens when the solvent in the vinyl reacts with the surface (or substrate) it is applied to. We don’t recommend applying graphics to surfaces that are newly painted or new plastics.
Bubbles and wrinkles in vinyls can be ironed out with fingernails and squeegees and air release tools. Try to avoid pins and knives to poke holes as this can damage the graphic. You can even try applying gentle heat to stretch out a wrinkle, particularly if this is at the edge of the graphic.
Have you ever wondered if there’s a difference between vinyl decals and vinyl graphics?
There is.
Vinyl stickers are one bit of vinyl, one shape and peel off the backing like any sticker would. A vinyl graphic will be one design on one piece of vinyl on whatever background colour you choose. This could also be transparent.
Decals are more intricate, as such, vinyl decals tend to be cut to shape so a decal will have several different parts whereas a sticker will be just one piece.
Once removed from the backing and transferred into position, a decal will appear like a .png image with a transparent background meaning that there is essentially no background at all.
Decals are much fiddlier, and you have to be very careful and precise when applying them to your product. Vinyl graphics on the other hand, are a little more robust and easier to work with.
We don’t currently offer cut to shape vinyl decals, but we offer all sorts of options for standard vinyl graphics.
Our vinyl prints come with a self-adhesive backing, so we advise that they are applied to a clean, smooth, non-porous surface. They can be removed with ease and rarely ever leave behind any sticky residue. However, as with all types of stickers, if there is any stickiness left behind you can use this handy residue removal guide to help dissolve it.