From Legend to Discovery: Celebrating Ukrainian Heritage With Cut Vinyl Mural

With New York City being the hub for fashion, retail, food, and culture, Bestype Printing embraces the opportunity to work with professionals across various industries.

As the premier NYC printing solutions provider, we cover everything from lookbooks and wall decals to ballet brochures and e-zines. We are the one-stop creative solution for printing services in NYC. 

At Bestype, we love sharing the messages and marketing from our community out into the world. Being in the heart of NYC also allows us to be a part of some really cool projects and missions, whether helping designers be seen, businesses rise, or being the chosen professionals to honor legendary artists and their heritage, such as Ukrainian artist Waone Interesni Kazki.

We are kicking off a celebratory 7 part series to share with you some of Bestype’s most exciting print projects. It’s time to amplify the power of human creativity and the ability of bespoke pieces to have a reverberating impact when well done. When creating art or change, you must have a vision and plan for execution. This series highlights both.

What is Wall Vinyl?

An artist needs the right medium. A sketchbook will work out the idea, and a design draft can accommodate dimensionality, but translating an art piece to large format digital printing takes some technical know-how. That’s where Bestype comes in. 

One of our most popular customer-focused mediums that you will see in restaurants, at gala events, and even on food trucks is wall vinyl. Why? Well, vinyl wall prints are durable and easy to clean. This makes it effortless to display business logos in windows and create wall-scapes in restaurants or personalized corporate events. Their durability gives longevity to your pieces, and the vinyl make-up also allows for easy removal when promotions are over — unlike the use of paint or more tedious alternatives. 

Due to the technical nature of vinyl, the application should be performed by a professional to get the high-quality results you expect and deserve for your vision. Vinyl printing is done in-house at Bestype, which makes the entire process easier, whether you are stopping by to approve a seasonal promotion or the rollout of a wall mural. 

When Worlds Unite

Now we are going to take you behind the scenes of an exceptional large format digital printing project — you might call it a large wall mural — sharing every detail of how this magic came together.

Our client was The Smiley Collective, an NYC-based PR and Creative Consulting agency that wanted to spearhead an outdoor mural to be applied to a brick wall in the East Village — on the corner of Cooper Square and E 5th St., to be exact. There is a large Ukrainian community in the East Village, and The Smiley Collective was representing the East Village and Ukrainian artist Waone Interesni Kazki’s debut of a public mural in solidarity with the Ukrainian community.

How to Create a Wall Mural with Cut Vinyl

We used a large format digital print on self-adhesive vinyl with matte lamination to apply and install the 472.44″ x 78.74″ (12 meters x 2 meters) mural onto the wall. The wall’s dimensions were 88’-3″ W x 7′-2″ H. We made one panel, and then split it into workable pieces to accommodate the installation process as directed by our well-seasoned team.

The colors not only spotlighted the yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag but also depicted imagery communicating the artist’s invitation to the world, drawing attention to the present while honoring their heritage and their community. Trees frame the mural wall beckoning the passerby into another world with spirals of texture and contraction of space, overlaying inner connectivity. 

When The Smiley Collective chose Bestype for this installment, they used our vetted expertise to take into consideration color hue matching and print specificity to create a fluid and elegant display that would flow on a brick wall. We determined which adhesive with correct application techniques would maintain the artist’s vision to unite and celebrate worlds through art. 

An opening party marked the unveiling of the vinyl wall mural, with proceeds going to The Ukrainian Museum nearby on E 6th St, which is a charity initiative based in Ukraine that helps refugees and war victims. If you find yourself in the East Village at 25 Cooper Square, we invite you to stop by, and let us know your experience!

Contact Bestype

Whether you, too, are an artist or PR firm looking to install a wall mural, or a business owner ready to uplevel their window display, call Bestype for a free quote on your next large scale cut vinyl installment. Remember, we are NYC’s creative printing solution center and are available to help with any scale project. Up next in our series, we will spotlight a cut vinyl lettering project for on the revel.