Sport & Venue
Stadium branding in tensioned stretch fabric
Stadium branding for Rogers and the Toronto Blue Jays, produced as dye sublimated stretch fabric on Procura hardware. Stadium graphics are read at distances no other environment asks for, and they are read twice: once by the crowd in the building and once by a broadcast camera.
What the job demanded
Two audiences with incompatible requirements makes stadium work distinctive. In the bowl, graphics are seen from tens of metres away across a range of angles, so scale and contrast govern legibility. On camera, the same surface is lit by floodlighting and captured at high shutter speeds, where a glossy face produces specular hot spots and a tight repeating pattern can alias into moire. Colour has to hold across daylight, floodlight and whatever mix falls between them. Beyond the optics, access is the practical constraint: installation happens around a fixture calendar, usually overnight, into existing structure that was not designed with graphics in mind, and anything left slack over a long span will move in the airflow and read as a defect from the far side of the building.
How it was produced
Dye sublimation onto stretch polyester is well matched to this. Disperse dye is driven into the fibre under heat and pressure, so the colour is inside the yarn: there is no surface coating to gloss up under floodlight, and the resulting matte face returns light diffusely rather than throwing hot spots back at a camera. The material is also forgiving in handling, since a colour bonded in the fibre will not crack or scuff when panels are folded, transported and pulled into position by hand. Skins were sewn to size with a silicone bead around the perimeter and tensioned into Procura aluminium extrusion, which pulls the face flat and hides the frame behind the image. Panels can be removed, laundered and refitted, or reprinted against the same locked colour build for a later season.
