New Member Profile: Surface Ink Vertical Printing
Meet Joel Gerlach, owner of Surface Ink Vertical Printing. To welcome Surface Ink as a new member of the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, we recently spoke with Joel to find out more about him and the company.
Tell us a little about Surface Ink Vertical Printing.
Surface Ink is a brand new business, officially launched February of 2023. We have a cutting-edge, German-made UV printer than can print directly onto any vertical surface at incredibly high resolution. There are only 12 of these machines in all of North America and we have the only one west of Chicago – right here in Springfield! What is so exciting about this technology is that it is a fundamental shift in how large-format printing is done. Whether it’s printing a giant mural on the exterior of a building, printing a Victorian backdrop on cloth for a local theater, printing portraits of families on a piece of wood, or printing a landscape onto a piece of glass, this printer makes it possible – in a way that’s not only more affordable than traditional banners or vinyl, but which generates virtually zero waste and is easily removed or covered up. It’s a game changer, in so many ways.
Where and how did you get your start in this type of business?
I sure didn’t imagine I would be getting involved with printing, that’s for sure! My original background was in film. I’m from Oregon, but I spent about 10 years in Los Angeles working in the film industry on various projects for Disney, Lego, Marvel, etc. Then, I was a creative director at an agency and for a large technology company before really wanting to try something new, something that had a longer lasting impact than a simple movie or TV commercial. Completely by accident, I found myself watching a video that featured, among other new exciting technologies, a machine that could print on walls. I was hooked. I reached out to the company in Germany who makes them, they got me in touch with their North American partners, and next thing I knew, I had a deposit down to become one of the first owner/operators of a Wallpen E2 machine in North America. Ever since I did my first wall print with the machine, I’ve been hooked. When I’m not printing, I wish I was! In fact, right now I can hear the printer running a test in the back room and it makes me pretty excited to see the result.
What makes Surface Ink Vertical Printing unique?
So, traditional signage or large-format printing requires the use of sizable banners or giant rolls of printable vinyl, which are often expensive to purchase and install, and require significant time to install correctly. They’re also incredibly wasteful, for if they get damaged they’ll peel off the wall or shred apart, which means they’ll get thrown away and – especially with vinyl – when removed, will damage the underlying wall which requires a lot of additional material to refinish the wall. With the Wallpen printer we have here at Surface Ink, our clients provide the canvas we print on, most often their walls, and covering up our prints in the future is as simple as two coats of paint. We have no restrictions on what can be printed. Our printer is so flexible that we can even print faded drop shadows on the wall to make the print look like it is floating off the surface! The prints are incredibly high fidelity as well, we can print up to 1200dpi onto the surface – four times the resolution of traditional commercial printing. And because our printer uses a UV-cured ink that sprays onto the surface, we can print on heavily textured walls like brick, cinderblock, concrete, vinyl, even rough wood! Finally, we’re incredibly eco-friendly. The printer can print 800 square feet of surface area with the same amount of ink that fits in a can of soda. It’s so much better for the environment than any other print medium. Like I said, it’s a total game changer!
What do you like most about your work?
To me personally, I love that this printer is like the standout example for what it means to mix art and technology in a way that provides a huge benefit to everyone. This printer enables artists and creatives who might otherwise be limited to purely digital mediums or painting only on small canvases to scale their work up to the size of giant murals and walls. I even had an incredible muralist, Ila Rose, come to the showroom, and she got super excited because this printer will enable her to say yes to jobs that she might not otherwise be able to say yes to, including the ability for this printer to lay down the outline for her in advance, where she then could come in and do her final paint work and save a huge amount of time. So whether it’s a corporation who wants their logo printed at a giant scale on their wall, an artist who wants to see their work printed on wood, a muralist who can scale more easily, a photographer who wants to print a new backdrop for their studio, or a quilt maker who wants a picture printed on a piece of cloth to sew into a quilt… it’s all available at an unprecedented scale of efficiency and affordability that hasn’t ever been possible before. That’s what gets me so excited, the thing I like the most: being able to say YES to all kinds of new ideas and opportunities that people bring my way, and to approach it from the standpoint of bringing cutting-edge technology into the world of art and design. I’m excited for all the ideas and possibilities that have yet to come my way!
Anything else you’d like to share?
If you have a space you’d like to do some prints on, or perhaps a unique business or product that you want to try to do some prints on (for example, I have a local pilot who wants me to print a custom design onto his powder-coated instrument panel), I’d love to talk about how we can partner together! You can get in touch and see the portfolio of wallprints that we’ve done at our website: Surface.Ink
Surface Ink Vertical Printing is the Pacific Northwest’s only vertical wallprinting service, featuring a cutting-edge vertical printer capable of printing any photo, graphic, or design directly to any kind of surface.
