Sport Graphics Plays in the NCAA Final Four

In its own way, Indianapolis-based Sport Graphics is playing an integral part in this year’s NCAA March Madness men’s basketball championships.

The company produced signs and graphics for the entire NCAA tournament, including signs for the airport, convention center, and arena.

But the icing on the cake is a massive interactive “bracket,” hung on the side of the JW Marriott Indianapolis, which Sport Graphics created, produced, and installed. The bracket, made out of adhesive window perf, measures a total of 44,000 square feet, and is 165 feet tall by 267 feet wide. It stands 16-1/2 stories high.

On Monday, March 16th, the day after the NCAA announced the 68 teams invited to participate in the first round of March Madness, all the team names were placed on the giant bracket. After each round of the tournament, Sports Graphics updates the interactive bracket to show the teams left playing and the subsequent winners. The names of the Final Four teams (Kentucky Wildcats vs. Wisconsin Badgers and Michigan State Spartans vs. Duke Blue Devils) were uploaded Monday, March 30.

Contracted by the NCAA to produce graphics for the Final Four championship, which takes place in the organization’s hometown of Indianapolis, “we knew we wanted to do something big, bold, special, and grand,” explained Terry Powers, Sport Graphics’ vice president of client services.

The creative process began in January, with a brainstorming session leading to the concept of producing a giant bracket that would hang on the side of the downtown JW Marriott for the tournament’s duration.

Sport Graphics produced the oversized graphic on its EFI VUTEk HS100 Pro inkjet press.

“If we were to print it straight at one time, at 2,400 sqft an hour it would run for 18 hours straight,” he noted. The 44,000 total sqft of adhesive window perf (peel and stick) is being covered with another 12,000 sqft of the team names for a total use of over 56,000 sqft window perf.

All told, it took 320 printed panels to create the jumbo bracket, which was assembled like a jigsaw puzzle to create the final graphic, said Powers.

Each step of the way delivered major challenges, from how to design and produce the 320 panels to ensure they all lined up once the bracket was hung, to how they were to be installed.

The pieces were ‘tiled’ using a CAD drawing of the building with the art laid over the top. Each panel was rolled and packaged in a box to very specific instructions, and numbered left to right and from top to bottom.

“The installer has to be able to take the panel and put it right on the building—there is no space on the ‘swing stage’ (similar to what a window washer uses) to unroll the piece, and he is unable to see the graphic from that high up,” Powers explained. The installer doesn’t know which piece he is putting up – he is just following the numbering system.

For the initial two weeks of installation, there was still a lot of snow on the ground, and high winds. “When we first started there was eight inches of snow on the roof that had to be shoveled and moved out so we could bring in the equipment,” recalled Powers.

The project required a lot of engineering and brainstorming, to make sure it would work,” he added.

Powers estimates the total project, when all is said and done, will have taken 1,500 hours of labor.

“One of the elements we didn't see coming is the amount of attention it would get,” Powers said. Crowds started forming as soon as the installation began on Monday. “The crowds kept growing, and by 11:00 am on Monday most of the teams were up. As each team was placed, there were cheers; each team had its fan base.”

It’s become a tourist attraction in its own right.

During the planning stages, Sports Graphics also brainstormed on how to make the bracket more interactive and how to include all the teams in the process.

As each team’s name was placed on the bracket, Sports Graphics filmed short videos and uploaded them to a NCAA site. “The NCAA then communicated to all the schools that the videos were available; we saw through Twitter that the video links were being retweeted,” Powers said.

Social media has exploded with the posts about the project. “It was a lot bigger than we had anticipated,” noted Powers.

Sport Graphics is no stranger to high profile projects. For the 2012 Super Bowl, which was held in Indianapolis that year, it produced a 34-story Lombardi Trophy that hung on the side of the same Marriott hotel.

Although it is widely known for the oversized work it does for the NFL, NCAA, and university sports programs, Sports Graphics also offers a full slate of signage, graphic displays, and commercial offset printing services for general business clients, and has a full-service in-house creative department. Frank and Linda Hancock founded the company, which will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2016.

Sport Graphics is also making signage for Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium, home to the Final Four game on April 4th and the championship game on April 6th. The oversized bracket will be updated one last time on April 7th, with the winner of the Big Dance.