A Night at the Opera for Still Creek Press

The company may be called Still Creek Press, but for the company’s 30+-year history, it has been anything but still. Based in Vancouver, B.C., Still Creek Press was founded by Len McClean to originally print business forms. Now run by his son Cameron, Still Creek Press has evolved over the decades and now offers—in addition to the original business forms—full digital printing and wide-format graphics, and even some packaging printing.

“We’ve had to adapt to offer different products just to keep in line with what’s in demand,” said Eric Benes, Still Creek Press’s sales representative and cousin of Cameron McClean. “So now we still do business forms and we’ve got sheetfed capabilities, a full digital department and a wide-format department.” 

Still Creek Press began producing wide-format graphics about five years ago, and the company expanded its capabilities organically.

“We landed a few customers, and they were all interested in various types of wide format, and we started off by just jobbing it out to other companies nearby that we had relationships with,” Benes said. “Once it got to a certain point where it made sense, we decided to jump in and buy some equipment and allocate some space in our building to it. And it’s been growing since.”

The company has two Roland rollfed printers and a Flora flatbed.

“We can run a four by eight sheet [on the Flora] and as long as the surface is flat, we can print up to four inches,” he added.

A cutter that complements the Rolands and a laminator, round out Still Creek Press’s wide-format equipment roster. 

Still Creek Press’ customer base is a healthy mix of chains, in particular restaurants, and an array of local businesses such as dentists.

“We have dental offices around us that reach out saying, ‘We need a banner for an event coming up,’ or sales reps contacting us for backdrops for Zoom meetings—that has been kind of big lately.”

With Vancouver's substantial movie and television industry, the company has started pursuing some projects with studios.

“We have an ideal location,” Benes said, “just around the corner from one of the largest studios.”

One recent project that the company tackled was a floor graphics project for the University of British Columbia (UBC), where students in the Opera program traditionally stage and perform a number of operas each year. That was put on hold when indoor entertainment venues across Canada had to close, but, undaunted, UBC Opera decided to put on several virtual events in late November. The students performed at the University’s venue, and the show was streamed live to audiences watching online. 

Still Creek Press’ role in the project was to produce stage graphics that simulated a dirt road. However, their involvement in the project came at the last minute after a lot of on-again-off-again decision-making regarding live events, and a realization that the traditional method of stage design would not be feasible.

“What they typically do is they lay fabric down across the stage and someone or a small team will actually paint the fabric,” Benes said. “Once it’s painted, they have the ability to roll it up and take it off the stage, because often they’ll have various productions coming in at the same time and they need to switch back and forth between them.”

Initially, the opera company had been given the go-ahead to stage an in-person production. However, after tickets had been sold, the government announced that since the virus was getting worse again, in-person events were a no-go. So UBC Opera decided—at the 11th hour—to instead stage it as a virtual show.

“Because of this, they only had about a week to get the stage set up, and that wasn’t enough time to paint the fabric stage.”

Enter printed floor graphics.

“We were in that space a little bit with some of our other clients and they ended up getting referred to us,” Benes said. “They contacted us to see if we had any ideas as to how we could expedite it and get it done.”

Enter Still Creek Press’s Roland printers (SOLJET Pro 4 XR-640s) and Drytac SpotOn Floor 200 vinyl film. Over a marathon four day/night session one long weekend, Still Creek Press produced graphics covering an area of 70 x 90 feet. 

“We needed [a floor vinyl] that was going to apply easily with no fuss and that was going to come up easily,” Benes said. “I’ve used SpotOn quite a bit over the years and I knew it would do the job.”

Benes kept an eye on the installation, which went without a hitch.

“When you do these projects, there’s always something that comes up, but it went really well,” he said.

There was only one minor incident in which one panel had to be reprinted, but other than that, it couldn’t have gone more smoothly.

“That was the only thing over the entire course of the project, so I was pretty happy about that.” 

Another project that Benes is especially proud of was a series of glass panels for the Parq Vancouver hotel.

“There’s a massive array of 15-foot-tall glass panels facing the exterior of the building, and we had to do a frosted pattern across them,” he said. “It was about a three-day install that went really well.”

Still Creek Press has kept evolving, but as with virtually everyone, the pandemic has put the kibosh on a lot of forward thinking and future planning and even looking at new application areas to branch into.

“Typically, our minds would be going a million miles a minute on different things and different ideas, but right now, in the current climate, everyone’s pretty locked down.”

Still, the company’s wide-format capabilities cover the waterfront in terms of what the company is usually called on to produce. 

“With the way wide-format works, typically people come to us with a problem and it’s kind of fun when you get to think of ideas and problem-solve, troubleshoot and see what’s going to work for them.”

Still Creek Press was also heavily into events, which are still on hold, save for “virtual” events like the opera project. Once the pandemic lets up, Benes says the company is looking forward to picking up where they left off.

“We had been working a lot with the movie industry lately, so we’d like to continue that up.”