I hate applied vinyl. Vinyl, the adhesive-backed and ready-to-apply, custom-cut kind, is ubiquitous in museum exhibits. (Even in interior design, DIY vinyl wall decals are the hot new thing.)
There are benefits to using vinyl, I will admit. For example:
1. Vinyl letters are easy to apply and easy to remove, making them convenient for short-term, temporary exhibits. Just about anyone can apply vinyl to a wall.
2. Vinyl is cheap. For small runs and one-offs it is much less expensive to use vinyl over silkscreen because of silkscreen’s initial set-up costs and the time and skill required to do it correctly.
3. Vinyl can be applied to most any type of surface, and to irregular shapes.
But I'm not condoning the use of vinyl in exhibits, or on your bedroom wall. This post is about how much I hate vinyl, after all. Some aesthetic reasons:
1. Vinyl is shiny. (If you are intentionally going for reflections, disregard this reason.) Vinyl does come in matte finishes — just as it comes in different types based on the surface it will be applied to, the environment it will live in, and the desired longevity — albeit with color options more limited than those for standard gloss finish. Basic, shiny vinyl? It catches the light in unappealing ways. It calls attention to itself, the material. It ruins perfectly good design.
2. Vinyl is easily damaged. People like to pick at things and if given the chance, if they think no one is looking, they will pick and scratch at exhibit graphics. Of course this applies to all graphics, not just the vinyl ones, but vinyl makes for an especially appealing target. If you are applying vinyl to glass, an easy way around this would be to apply it to the “second” or inside surface. If you’re applying vinyl to a wall, at a height within reach … good luck.
3. Vinyl will shrink and peel. It can only live on a wall for a finite amount of time. If the vinyl escapes being picked off, how long before it starts to peel off? I’ve seen varying claims about the lifespan of vinyl letters; the average run seems to be five years. If your exhibit is meant to be on view for longer than that you should probably consider other materials.
4. Vinyl comes in an infuriatingly limited selection of colors. (I have before changed a selected palette color in order to match what was available in vinyl. Ugh, so backwards.) You can have your vinyl custom-printed, either directly from the manufacturer or by your project printer/fabricator, but that typically comes with additional costs and lead times.
And then there are the environmental and health concerns about vinyl. To be continued.… (Update: Or not. I never wrote a Part 2.)
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Post updated in January 2021 with text edits. Broken link has been replaced with archived URL, courtesy of archive.org. This post was originally published at theexhibitdesigner.com on 6 December 2009.