Signbox Ltd, the UK’s leading architectural signage company and winner of the coveted ‘Sign Company of the Year’ award for the past two years, has just 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. Signbox partnered with lead contractors Overbury, together with project architects Pringle Brandon. The signage element of the renovation work 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. Glazing manifestation was room specific, providing both a degree of privacy and graphic detail, designed to match the feature fabric colour. External work included corporate and directional signage.
To meet the needs of such a multi-faceted assignment Signbox utilised both its proprietary systems and bespoke solutions, the most unusual and striking of which were two large feature graphics, both over 8 metres wide, 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 dramatic visual effect.
Commenting on this major 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”.
