Signbox Ltd completed a major project at the Chertsey, Surrey headquarters of Astellas Pharma Europe Ltd, the European subsidiary of Astellas. One of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies in the world, employing 16,000 people across multiple locations, Astellas has global sales of £7.25 billion.
Used for filming in the 2010 hit movie ‘Inception’ starring Leonardo DiCaprio, the Astellas European HQ building has just been extensively refurbished. Partnering with lead contractors Overbury, with whom Signbox have a long and close working relationship, together with project architects Pringle Brandon, Signbox won the tender for the building’s signage requirements against four other competitors.
The signage project comprised extensive internal branding including glazing manifestation on all three floors, feature wallpaper and environmental graphics, wayfinding signs together with special bespoke displays and freestanding tension fabric frames. External work included corporate and directional signage.
The multi-faceted nature of this project meant Signbox utilising both its proprietary systems and a great deal of bespoke solutions, the most unusual and striking of which were two large feature graphics, both over 8 metres wide and one of which was LED backlit. To create these Signbox used its ingenious ‘Kube’ system that’s ideally suited to huge vistas as the lightweight frame and tension fabric system guarantees a smooth, seamless display resulting in a stunning and powerful visual effect.
Glazing manifestation was room specific, providing both a degree of privacy and graphic detail, designed to match the feature fabric colour. This was successfully accomplished by printing an optically-clear Lintec polyester film with a varying density of white ink to achieve the desired effect.
Commenting on this project, Mark Bartlett, Managing Director of Signbox, said, “We were delighted to win such a prestigious contract with one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies. Involving over 500 metres of manifestation and wallpaper graphics, this was another project where our Durst print technology came into its own as it’s ideally suited to printing large format graphics at such fine art quality.
“With the project now completed we have had positive feedback from Astellas who have expressed their satisfaction with all the finished signage, both internal and external”.
