Challenge: Use elevator wrap to enhance guest experience at upscale restaurant.

Customer:
Graphic Alliance, Wheeling, Illinois
Le Colonial restaurant, Chicago, Illinois

Application: Elevator wrap

Solutions: Mactac MACmark 6600 Metallic Dark Charcoal and PERMACOLOR SAG 53 2.0 mil Hard Coated Protection Laminate

Project Summary:
When Chicago’s famous French Vietnamese restaurant Le Colonial decided to move from its original location to a new location nearby due to rising rent costs, the restaurant’s owner Joe King saw it as an opportunity to refresh the restaurant’s 1920’s French Colonial Vietnamese décor. But one aspect of the new location proved to be a particularly tricky décor challenge: the elevator, which customers take to reach the third-floor restaurant. Though challenging, the restaurant saw the barren elevator as an opportunity to enhance and extend its customer experience by completely wrapping the elevator’s interior—making customers feel as if they are being transported from present-day Chicago to Saigon, Vietnam in the early 1920s. To help bring their vision to life, Le Colonial sought the expertise of Chicago marketing agency Graphic Alliance.

For more than two decades, Graphic Alliance has been designing, printing and installing wall and window graphics to meet their customers’ needs. Le Colonial’s designer, Mark Knaurer, created a plan to design a custom elevator wrap that would cover nearly the entire interior of the elevator.
 

To complete the project, Graphic Alliance chose MACmark 6600 Metallic Dark Charcoal (CV666904), which is designed for applications over complex curves, and PERMACOLOR SAG 2.0 mil Hard Coated Protection Laminate (SAG53W54L150), an anti-graffiti and window-protection film. Graphic Alliance used two layers of media and one layer of overlaminate for the project. The installation required heating, stretching and cutting the materials to accommodate the elevator’s curves and buttons on its keypad. During the 50-hour installation, Graphic Alliance installed each piece of media individually and used a tucking tool to hide the edges of each seam.

“We have used scratch-resistant material in the past, but none have taken the heat as well as Mactac’s PERMACOLOR SAG film,” says Eric Grossman, founder, and CEO of Graphic Alliance. “By heating the product, we were able to stretch the material to work around the elevator’s curves and buttons—creating a flawless finished look.”

Mactac MACmark 6600 is a 2.0-mil metallic cast vinyl PVC film. It is coated on one side with a permanent acrylic pressure-sensitive adhesive and is supplied with a 78# white kraft liner. The cast vinyl film is designed for applications over complex curves like rivets, corrugations, and other irregular surfaces.

PERMACOLOR SAG 53 is a 2.0-mil clear, hard coated polyester PET film with a high-gloss finish. It is coated on one side with an optically clear permanent acrylic pressure-sensitive adhesive and is supplied with a 78# white kraft liner. The hard coated protection laminate offers good UV and abrasion protection.