Oct 3 2007
Commerce Color, a large and grand format digital printer based in St. Louis, Missouri, printed all of the custom designed wallpaper graphics for Milliken Carpet's award-winning NeoCon® 2007 showroom. The Milliken showroom won the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) Best of Show Award as well as the Award for Showrooms Larger Than 3,000 sq. ft. in the 12th Annual IIDA Showroom & Booth Design Competition, co-sponsored by Contract magazine. The competition is part of the Association's activities at NeoCon® 2007. The award winners will be featured in an upcoming issue of Contract magazine.
Q Studio, an architectural firm based in Chicago, designed Milliken's showroom. Principal Catherine Severson found Commerce Color through a search on the Internet. She spoke with several people at Commerce Color and everyone seemed confident and knowledgeable, which gave her a high level of confidence to move forward, even though she had never worked with them before. "Commerce Color was fabulous to work with," says Severson. "From the first time I talked to them, they understood what we were trying to do.
The project presented some unique technical challenges: Q Studio worked closely with Milliken's in-house design group in designing the wall murals, which depicted carpet patterns from Milliken's line. There was some difficulty translating Milliken's design group's electronic files -- originally configured to print on carpet -- to print accurately on vinyl. Carpet is more absorbent than vinyl, so the files had to be tweaked to print accurately on the vinyl wall murals.
Severson has high praise for Commerce Color: "They were able to guide us through the process, coaching the graphics group on how to translate their carpet patterns into custom wallpaper. We went through many rounds of samples to get the color right and Commerce Color was so patient with us. The final product looked fabulous and Milliken has had countless inquiries about the wallcovering."