What is Wide Format Media and Where is it Used?

You Already Know
Even if you aren’t sure what it is, you’re more than likely already familiar with Wide Format Media. Wide Format Media generally refers to the equipment used in the production of various large prints. No matter what the finished product is used for, the process requires a specialized digital printer that is designed to handle prints that are up to and over 60” wide. Inkjet technology allows these printers to work on a variety of different material, including vinyl or glossy-coated papers.
Instead of using individual sheets like smaller-scale printers do, wide format printers use rolls of material to produce the finished product on a much larger scale. But what’s the point of this? Why use a big roll of paper instead of just pieces of paper?
So, What is Wide Format Media Good For?
Well, everything.
Wide format media, as previously mentioned, refers to products that need to be created on a much larger scale. Since a wide format printer uses a roll of material, it can produce a project of almost any size, even if it’s something as simple as a sheet of stickers. This isn’t exactly a typical use, but it is most certainly a possibility.
More commonly, wide format media projects include banners, posters, art prints, wall murals, store displays, or window graphics. Typically, any one of those projects needs to be bigger than a single piece of A4 paper, so a wide format printer is absolutely necessary.
The only real limit when working with wide format media is the user’s imagination. Whether you want to make a vehicle or building wrap or an adhesive banner or vinyl graphic, a wide format printer, and an operator with the rights skills, can make it happen. Wide format media has permeated American culture to the point where someone, especially if that someone lives in a big city, sees it in use hundreds of times a day.
Picture This
Imagine that you’re in a taxi, riding down the street. Does the cab have a backlit advertisement on the top? If so, you just saw some wide format media. Now, look out the window of the taxi. You see a store that has a big banner hanging over the entrance that says “Grand Opening.” That banner is another example of wide format media. Next door, you see a store with pictures of deer running across the window. Those adhesive graphics are yet another example of wide format media.
Even outside of the big city, wide format media can be seen practically everywhere. The number of billboards along the millions of miles of road in the United States are truly uncountable. All of these examples show why wide format media is an important part of any marketing campaign.
Wide format media can permeate the market in a way that no other form of advertising or media can. Without engaging it at all, the casual pedestrian subconsciously absorbs the information of an advertisement in the form of a bus wrap or billboard.
About Author
This guest post was supplied by Jon Dunn of i-Fluid Media on behalf of Presco, leader in the Print Finishing market providing digital print finishing equipments to various Business’s across UK and Europe.