W&Co's LED light sheets gives Irish Whiskey Museum a warm glow.

In the heart of Dublin’s beautiful city a brand new historical and interactive museum has opened its doors. Based on the traditional and vivid history of Dublin’s industrial past, specifically of alcoholic beverages and a long association with the drinks industry, Ireland’s first whiskey museum opened in autumn 2014.

The museum features a series of exhibitions detailing the history of whiskey distilling in Ireland through the use of interactive technology and actors. Visitors also have the opportunity to sample the Irish whiskies in a special tasting room.

In the summer of 2014 W&Co was approached by two Irish companies, MJ Architecture & The Irish Pub Company, to supply an LED feature lighting display for the museum’s tasting room. Our knowledge and expertise were utilised to produce a 14 metre wide LED feature wall.

The designer’s brief was to supply LED light panels that would be easy to install, could be recessed behind shelving and produced in a warm amber colour that would complement the backlit whiskey bottles on the shelves. The wall where the LED light panels were to be mounted had a convex curve, therefore, the panels were manufactured in twelve 1.2 metre wide sections to fit the shape. Television screens and whiskey bottles were placed on the shelves and backlit by the diffused LED light panels.

After two months of manufacturing trials and preparing translucent vinyl swatches, the client decided to use a warm orange filter film to be applied to the LED panels to increase the warmth of the lighting. The light panels were supplied with LEDs mounted to both long edges, along with a dimmable transformer to power all the LED light panels simultaneously. 

The store officially opened around autumn 2014 and has been a huge success and is expected to generate around 80,000 visitors in its first year. The project was an overall success the comments were very positive from the client.  Sean Ryan, interior design at MJ Architecture wrote, “I am very happy with the finished result of the whiskey wall, it conveys exactly what I intended with the design concept. Many people have commented on how great the effect is so thanks for your assistance on the project.”

Tiger Takeover The High Street

When Tiger, the international Danish variety retailer, wanted to update their advertising by replacing non-illuminated poster displays for ultra slim LED displays, W&Co’s Razor LED light boxes were specified as the all round best product to be used within new stores.

 

W&Co’s single sided wall mounted and double-sided cable hanging Razor LED light boxes have been supplied to shop fitters of Tiger, for use within stores all throughout the UK including London, Scotland, Norwich and most recently Peterborough.

Ceiling suspended window displays are the ideal solution for stores, like Tiger, that have a fully glazed shop front design and the ultra slim design of this light box means it can sit a comfortable distance from the window without taking up too much space.

By swapping their non-illuminated posters for W&Co’s sleek Razor LED Light boxes to display their graphics, Tiger has been able to make use of valuable window space while producing effective eye-catching advertising during all hours of the day.

Illuminated with a specially developed LED light panel, the Razor light box offers superior brightness and even illumination, while the anti-glare front sheet prevents natural light from glaring off of the graphics and filters the sun’s UV rays, which is one of the main contributing factors to fading prints.

W&Co is set to continue supplying slimline LED light box displays to Tiger stores as they continue to expand and develop new stores throughout the UK.

Show Stopping Illuminated Signage for Indigo at the O2

Having previously helped with some illuminated way finding signage inside the arena W&Co was delighted The O2 came back for assistance with the re-branding of their dedicated entertainment venue Indigo at The O2, formerly IndigO2.

The contemporary, glamorous and state-of-the-art venue which has a capacity of 2,800 guests needed an equally glamorous looking sign for both their main entrance and their VIP Entrance which was being missed by guests due to the lack of visible signage.

Our skilled design team visited The O2’s Venue Management to discuss possible options to improve the visibility of the VIP Entrance and the best way of implementing the new branding onto the large curved wall of the main entrance. Consultations were also held with The O2’s brand guardians to offer professional advice about the build, colour and design of the signage, while ensuring strict guidelines were met.

Following this a series of scale 3D design proposals were produced in-house for The O2. By utilising W&Co’s 3D visualisation service, the client was able to envisage how the final custom sign installation would look once completed and also gave them an opportunity to make alterations to their design to guarantee optimum results.

After some fine-tuning to the designs the new signage was approved at 5m x 2.5m for the curved wall on the main entrance and a 13m x 1m wraparound sign for the VIP entrance. The manufacture was a particularly challenging build not only due to the scale and complex design of the signage but because of the irregularity of the curved mounting surfaces for which Foamex templates had to be produced as accurately as possible for a perfect fit.

The final designs were manufactured from a series of fret cut and LED back illuminated sign trays with the main entrance having built-up, face illuminating lettering mounted to the face for added depth.

The circular pattern on the main entrance signage was achieved by having a variety of different sized fret cut holes; each backed with opalescent acrylic that had been printed with coloured vinyl. The sign was so intricately detailed that each individual circle had a different pantone colour and a different levels of opacity of that colour. Due to the complexity of the new Indigo at The O2 logo design, a portion of the work was completed manually; this involved meticulously hand drilling the smaller holes.

The overall design works really well in the venue space giving visitors approaching from different directions a clear beacon to follow to get to the relevant entrance for their night out.

Fashionable Tension Fabric Face LED Lightboxes for Whistles, St Pancras International.

 

Leading womenswear brand, Whistles, first contacted W&Co in 2013 to supply retail displays to their new flagship store on Dover Street in Mayfair, London. FabriLite Slim LED light boxes were selected for their ultra slim design and premium quality build to complement the flagship's sleek and minimalist decor.

Since also successfully supplying tension fabric LED light boxes to stores within Glasgow and Birmingham Bullring, Whistles approached W&Co to help fit-out their brand new store in St Pancras International Station.

Working closely with Whistles and their store designers, CJF Designs, to establish a clear and concise understanding of all their requirements and objectives for the new store, W&Co supplied a number of large format FabriLite LED light boxes to both the womenswear and menswear departments.

One particularly large format light box, situated behind the cash desk, covered an area of over 4 x 3 metres. Due to the size, these large format light boxes were manufactured in several parts and assembled on site.

 

One of the main advantages of tension fabric systems is that one seamless printed graphic can be stretched across the entire face of the complete light box to create high impact visual effects with edge-to-edge display graphics.

The St Pancras store was launched in mid September to coincide with the London Fashion Week SS15 event.  Upon completion, Store Development & Facilities Co-ordinator Chloë Hines said– “I just wanted to say a big thank you for the work you have done on St Pancras - everyone in the office is talking about it and lots of people are planning to visit tomorrow for the SS15 event for London Fashion Week.”

We are looking forward to working with Whistles again in 2015 to fit-out their UK and International sites.

BMW Park Lane, Basement Handover Bay Refurbishment

Having worked successfully with BMW on previous projects W&Co were contacted to assist them with their basement handover bay refurbishment at their flagship store on London’s Park Lane. BMW wanted to brighten up their otherwise gloomy basement area with large format graphics and the ‘FabriLite’ fabric face light box was chosen as the ideal solution to cover a number of the large plain white walls. A range of units were built to custom sizes, the largest being a huge 8m wide! W&Co worked closely with the design team to create a range of exciting graphics that give the impression that the customer's new car has driven straight out of the design!

For more information and photos of our previous work with BMW please see the following link: http://www.w-co.co.uk/bmw-lightboxes.php