Always a work in progress.
GET VERTICAL · The wallPen magazine
The wall is the medium.
Hospitality
The lobby is the first holiday snap
Bold claims
The alternative hardly anyone knows about
Architecture
Exposed concrete stays exposed concrete
Workshop
A wall print takes shape, strip by strip
The last untouched medium.
Editorial
Editorial
Reading is good. Looking up is better.
A white wall can be just right. So can vinyl, wallpaper and a good framed picture. This issue shows what you gain when the design is created directly on the wall: on concrete, glass, wood and brick, in any shape, changeable right up to the start of printing and gone again with one roller of paint. GET VERTICAL means: chin up. The wall is the medium.
The editors
Gravity is a habit. Break it.
Bold Claims
Bold claims · Questions and answers
“Our walls are white. And that's how it should stay.”
“We don't know which design yet.”
“And what if we stop liking it?”
“Does it work on glass too?”
“Everything here is exposed concrete.”
“Can it be cleaned?”
“This is an escape route.”
“That'll never last.”
“Who would print it for us?”
“Walls are just background anyway.”
Bold Claims
Bold claims · Alternatives
Hosts
Hosts section · Hotels & Hospitality
Lobby, breakfast room, stairwell: wherever guests wait, they look at walls. Here hotels and restaurants show what those walls can become.
Hotels & Hospitality · Zoos & Leisure · Retail & Commerce · Art
Bold Claims
Bold Claims · Cleaning and hygiene
No edge, no joint, no frame. Nothing for dust to settle on or germs to crawl behind. The print is one with the wall and gets cleaned like the wall. A topic for practices, clinics and kitchens.
Bold Claims
Bold Claims · Getting rid of it
No peeling, no scraping, no glue residue. Paint roller over it, done.
Bold Claims
Bold Claims · Shape and depth
Any shape
Circle, silhouette, lettering, a branch growing around the corner.
Fades out
The motif fades softly into the wall. No edge, no border.
Adds depth
Freely placed images open up the space instead of plastering it over.
Materials
Section Materials · Surface
One wallPen, many surfaces. Each tile leads to all the media on that material.
Yes, glass too.
Bold Claims
Bold Claims · Resolution
On the left the whole motif, on the right a detail at original resolution: every pixel from the file, not enlarged, not sharpened. The texture of the wall stays visible in the print.
A floor is just a wall that gave up.
Architecture
Section Architecture · For planners and clients
Planning happens in the floor plan. Printing happens in elevation. Vinyl and wallpaper cover the concrete up. Wall printing puts the design into the concrete: pores, blowholes and formwork joints stay visible and tangible. Same with wood.
Feels like wall.
Because it is wall.
Bold Claims
Bold Claims · White Ink
With a white underprint, colours hold up even on dark walls. Or the white stands alone and draws on black.
First, humans stood up. Then everything else happened.
Culture
Section Culture
Museums, universities and public buildings use walls as exhibition space: for maps, timelines, typography.
Culture
Museums & Culture · Education & Research · Maps · Text & Typography
Bold Claims
Bold Claims · Fire safety in escape routes
In escape routes and stairwells, every extra bit of material counts. Film, wallpaper and picture frames each add their own layer to the wall. Wall printing adds nothing but a thin layer of paint to the existing surface.
Small print, important for once. What's allowed in an escape route is set by the building's fire safety plan. We provide the ink specs you need for it.
Bold Claims
Bold Claims · Changes
Wallpaper and film are produced in advance. A wall print is made on site. Size, position and motif can be changed right up until printing starts.
History
Feature · German Embassy Santo Domingo
A piece of the Berlin Wall stands under palm trees at the German Embassy in Santo Domingo. The wallPen printed it: directly onto the concrete, under a tent roof, with a view of the sea. No poster, no vinyl, nothing the Caribbean wind can tear off.
1989
Wall printing does world history too.
Bold Claims
Bold claims · Text on the wall
Welcome
Wall decal
After the third vacuuming, the O is gone.
Print is dead? Long live vertical.
Workshop
Section: Workshop · wallPen E2
A wall print takes shape strip by strip, directly on the surface. The archive holds timelapse videos and raw footage from real jobs.
Timelapse
Mosaic
Mosaic · All across the archive
GET VERTICAL
The wall was here first.
Walls don't scroll.
A wall remembers what a screen forgets.
Vertical is not a direction. It's an attitude.
Every building is a stack of unwritten pages.
The best space is above eye level.
Nothing to peel. Nothing to hang. Nothing to fall.
Change of heart? Paint over. Print again.
Ideas deserve height.
The world is 90 degrees bigger than it looks.
Archive
Made it to the top
A project, a question, a demo: wallPen is never far away. The archive holds everything that didn't fit in the issue, sorted by industry, surface and design.
Look up.
GET VERTICAL.