My client George contacted me in late 2016, having found my hand drawn maps on instagram. He wanted a custom map of Sydney to fill a 7m long wall in a new fitout for his real estate agency, Boutique Residential.
Read on below to see how we created this stunning wallpaper mural featuring a hand drawn map of Sydney!
How did this wallpaper mural project start?
When George first approached me, I wasn't quite sure how to fill the entire wall. Until then I sold my fine art prints ranging in sizes from A4 - A0. I originally sold them at Sydney's Paddington Markets, Balmain Markets (my local neighbourhood!), Finders Keepers Barangaroo and Etsy market in Chippendale.
With a background in landscape architecture, I knew quite a lot of people across the built environment and construction industry. I reached out to a few friends in commercial interiors, and they suggested wallpaper.
What a perfect solution! Hand painting all of those roads and streets would take too long and not necessarily result in crisp or straight edges. Wallpaper is an elegant, professional finish that is perfect for offices and easily installed. I found a wallpaper printer in Sydney for a sustainable, local material and a local wallpaper installer to hang it - the result is spectacular!
Now I specialise in custom designed wallpaper murals, and print wallpaper murals of my existing artworks for clients too.
How to Achieve a Crisp, High Resolution Wallpaper Mural?
If you purchase a pre-designed artwork from a generic printing or signage company, you can be certain that the image is being stretched to fit your wall size. You may not achieve the crispness or detail in the design that you're looking for.
Tiny Giraffe artworks are digitally created. They are hand drawn using Adobe Illustrator and an apple pencil or mouse. Adobe Illustrator is a powerful software program that produces vector based images - unlike a jpg format that will be pixelated if enlarged too far, vector artworks can be enlarged to any size without losing quality or crispness.
Perfect for crisp, detailed, high resolution wallpaper murals!
Sydney Office Wall Art - Before and After Images
George wanted to create an impact for his new office. It was being renovated from a medical practice to a real estate office, with a large feature wall opportunity. The wall is 7m long x 2.4m high.
Here is an image of the space prior to renovation:
I created this bespoke feature wall through the consideration of scale, composition and colour, converting an A3 artwork to an artwork 2.5m high x 7m wide.
A stunning wallpaper mural requires the original artwork to be divided into a series of individually printed wallpaper panels that when joined together will create the overall image.
This large scale mural features sustainably sourced premium matte wallpaper, locally printed in Sydney, and expertly installed by Katia Miheyeva of Up The Wall Art. Katia did a tremendous job to ensure the mural had seamless joins for a professional finish. It was installed in early 2017.
This custom wallpaper mural brings George joy and attracts smiles from his own clients, every day. It connects people to the community in which they live, work and play.
In my client's words:
"Thank you Kylie for making our office look amazing. Our large scale art work is the talk of the building, we are so glad we decided to do this. We highly recommend Kylie and the team if you're after some WOW factor in your office."
Things to Consider With Map Murals:
The hardest part about a map mural can be taking a small image and enlarging it to fit a huge wall. This is particularly true of old maps found in library or online archives which are only available at a small size, and formatted as a raster image.
Raster images are JPGS predominantly, and the resolution is poor when enlarged, leaving the image grainy and pixelated. If the olden day image is the aesthetic you're after, that's OK, but often clients are left disappointed by the quality.
The majority of my artworks (especially my maps) are hand drawn using industry-leading vector based software Adobe Illustrator. A vector image is one that can be enlarged to any size without losing quality - you can scale down the artwork to fit a mobile screen or scale up to fit a billboard! It always stays perfectly crisp and clear.
Looking for a custom wall graphics for your own business?
I would love to assist you. Please call Kylie on 0421 635 553 or email: hello@tinygiraffe.co and we can arrange a chat to discuss your space. They really do make incredible feature walls for homes, offices and retail spaces. I look forward to hearing from you.
