April 12, 2021

Surrey based Signworks UK Ltd delivers landmark scale window graphics that function - beautifully…

Surya Hot Yoga is based in Wimbledon but its studio is said to be a sanctuary away from the world outside. It’s a place where its visitors can cultivate connections with themselves, restoring and balancing their bodies and harmonising inner space. The benefits are beyond any doubt. Try it once, Surya suggests, and you’ll find yourself hooked.

Surya’s studio occupies the entire top floor of a new building in Wimbledon with huge expanses of glazing admitting natural light to the studio floor. In creating an environment conducive to the whole Surya Hot Yoga experience, the glazing sent an open invitation to decorate it and the studio’s management accepted.

With previous connections to a contractor involved in the studio building’s development, Surrey based Signworks UK Ltd, run by Hussen Iqbal and his team, got the call to advise on the provision of applied graphics to the glazing. It would turn out to be a complex project in terms of detail, but one that good processes and experience would deliver.

The design for the whole programme of applied window graphics was contributed by one of the studio’s own clients and it centred around arrays of mandala-based geometric shapes. Every element in the design functions individually but the interplay of colour and scale registers as a whole. It’s a really beautiful thing and despite comprising static geometry, it leads the eye as though it were animated.

Digital print was considered for the job but fell because of the need for absolute optical purity between the mandala’s elements. Print receptive clear materials would impart minor optical disruptions and also impair the shadows the mandala were designed to cast to the studio’s interior. The answer was to use a top quality coloured-in-the-mass SignVinyl which would present colour to both interior and exterior views. Metamark M7 was specified.

Once the design was received by the team at Signworks, it needed editing and organising so that all of the elements in the arrangement would be produced in the correct colour and finish up on the correct glazing. A reference system was designed and worked to keep the installation coordinated upon delivery to site. With practically 250 metres of materials to manage - it was needed.

Metamark M7 copes with a wide range of application temperatures but fact the sun was shining and dry heat was radiating inside was welcome during installation. It took three days in total to adhere all of the elements involved. Some total coverage graphics were used to manage privacy in bathroom and shower areas.

The privacy graphics elements were made by applying Metamark Silver Etch to the glazing in question and then applying the coloured mandala geometry over the top of the film so as to present the colour to the interior view. The installation maintains light levels and colour but obscures the view from the exterior.

The extent and amount of graphics applied by the Signworks teams has delivered a remarkable and beautiful effect that completely transforms the studio interior. From the outside it creates an impression too but at landmark scale. Inside, the interplay of natural light in all its variety casts shadow detail that changes according to the hour.

It’s graphics and ID at one level. It’s art at another. Whatever way you look at it, it’s stunning.