Printed Acrylic for St Catherine's Catholic Primary School

THE CLIENT

St Catherine’s Primary school is located in the Dorset market town of Bridport. The school ethos is based on cultivating a positive learning environment for children, based on core Christian values. 

St Catherine’s endeavors to instill in their students a sense of community while improving their social and relationship skills.

Guiding children through their individual academic, spiritual, and personal journey is an essential part of the St. Catherine’s experience, and students have plenty of time and opportunity to pray and reflect throughout the school day.

THE BRIEF

Having worked with St. Catherine’s Catholic Primary earlier in the year on some external signage products, the client wanted us to design and fabricate a custom-printed acrylic 'Prayer Tree' with face-mounted sleeves—giving the teacher the ability to print out and attach prayers for the pupils to access and read. 

The design itself was based upon a similar ‘Prayer Tree’ that one staff member had seen at another school. An interesting brief, not your usual day in the office for our design team, but one we were looking forward to tackling with our years of experience working with printed acrylic and perspex.

With a stunning glass-like finish, acrylic is a hugely popular choice for modern signage and indoor displays. Most often used in offices and for door signs, acrylic is available in a variety of thicknesses dependent on your needs. Thanks to its versatility of use and contemporary aesthetics, it’s a great option for a classroom display such as this.

THE SOLUTION

The first step was to conduct a site visit and ascertain the client’s detailed brief and requirements. This also gave us the opportunity to take measurements within the classroom space and make sure the display would fit.

The acrylic tree was designed in-house by our studio team. The full-colour graphics were direct-printed onto the reverse of 5mm clear XT acrylic sheet. We printed the tree artwork using CMYK UV with a white pixel replacement layer. The tree itself was custom-cut to shape, so that it could fit perfectly into the desired wall space.

The left section of the tree measured 1297 by 2052mm while the right measured 1049 by 2338mm. The acrylic display was fitted to the walls with screws and caps with the holes having been drilled on-site.

The tree was supplied with one A4 portrait acrylic poster sleeve and four A5 portrait posters sleeves. The sleeves were then bonded to the face of the acrylic with clear 3M polyester filmic tape—this process was also done on-site during the installation. 

The ‘Prayer Tree’ was a great success. The colours are vibrant and engaging, with an unbeatable print quality, while being perfectly fit-for-purpose. A good job well done!