Photos Courtesy of the Downtown Association of Fairbanks

The capital city of Fairbanks, AK has used vinyl wraps in a great way this year, so of course we want to talk about it! They have been doing promotional events since 2011 to try and bring tenants and businesses into the struggling downtown area—including hanging large banners off of a vacant building and throwing an event called the Paint the Pipes Project where artists were invited to paint the city’s pipes with different murals. This year’s project, The Window Project, was similar to the Paint the Pipes Project in that the city invited local artists to submit their art to be installed around the city.

Artist Hannah Foss with her 3rd-Place winning entry, "Kindan-no/The Forbidden Pool." Hannah is an animator at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

The artists entered digital prints that would be turned into vinyl window wraps and put into the windows of vacant buildings downtown. Each window wrap included a QR code in addition to the art that gave real estate information from downtownprospector.com—a database that was created for downtown Fairbanks—about the vacant building when scanned.

Entry entitled "Electric Feathers" by Brianna Reagan includes a QR code and sponsors at the bottom of the vinyl print.

The vinyl wraps were placed in 13 different downtown locations in the windows on the ground floor and people were invited to vote for their favorite piece. The winners were revealed at the unveiling of the window displays this last September.

Artist Amy Johnson talks about her first-place winning piece entitled "Golden Heart."

Each artist spoke a little about their work, and tourists and locals alike could admire the art displayed downtown. The theme the artists were given was “edge.” Whatever that meant was left to the artists to decide, and this led to a great deal of variety in the pieces shown! The art will remain in the windows until the buildings are leased—after that they will unfortunately have to come down. Still, that won't be such a bad thing if it means that more people are inhabiting the downtown area and bringing more life, art, and culture by leasing the vacant buildings!

We thought this was a really cool and creative way to use vinyl wraps to help an entire city! We hope the project works out well for them. Looking to get a vinyl wrap for a project you're working on? Contact the experts at 12-Point SignWorks and get a free quote on wrap production and installation.