Celebrate a Banner Year…with banners! (PHOTOS)

This year, 2015, is a very important year for the local universities in Vancouver.  Simon Fraser University turned 50 years old, and not to outdone, the University of British Columbia turned 100 years old!

Of course we know that there is no better way to celebrate a big anniversary than with street banners to match, so we’re quite glad that we were able to work with both of these amazing schools and produce hundreds of banners to go up all over Metro Vancouver.

Nearing the end of summer, we managed to get out there and photograph a few of them looking great with the Metro Vancouver city skyline. Photography fans, be sure you’re #lookingup the next time you’re on a photowalk!

Pride 2015: Vancouver Wrap-Up

2015 was a big year for The Flag Shop’s involvement in LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations with a lot of firsts. We launched our new Pride mini-site: pride.flagshop.com, joined in partnerships, and made donations to important local charities as well as launching a new contest. Read on to see the specifics of our involvement.

This year The Flag Shop came out in a big way. While our company has a longstanding relationship with members of the LGBTQ+ community this year we really took things to the next level.

Beginning in May, with the launch of our Pride-specific website, pride.flagshop.com, our commitment to the cause has really taken on steam. The website not only features our entire Pride product line but has also expanded to include a comprehensive listing of Pride events across Canada, Pride news coverage, a listing of Pride Societies across Canada and more. We are working on adding new products to our line to better serve the LGBTQ+ community.

Clockwise (from top-right): Our media wall looking great at this info booth (Photo: Vancouver Pride); Two of our Pride booth workers; A custom sewn Transgender flag for PFLAG Vancouver; One of our furry booth volunteers; Some Flag Shop paper flags adorning some fabulous shopping carts in the parade. (Photos: Rebecca Love)

Clockwise (from top-right): Our media wall looking great at this info booth (Photo: Vancouver Pride); Two of our Pride booth workers; A custom sewn Transgender flag for PFLAG Vancouver; One of our furry booth volunteers; Some Flag Shop paper flags adorning some fabulous shopping carts in the parade. (Photos: Rebecca Love)

We also deepened our involvement with local charitable organizations. We recently worked with the Vancouver Pride Society to produce a media wall for them as well as running a Pride flag booth at the Vancouver Pride Festival with proceeds being donated. We also donated a hand-sewn transgender flag for PFLAG Vancouver, an organization that speaks for a more accepting Canadian society in regards to sexual orientation and gender identity issues.

From left to right: A standing banner outside of the Out on Screen Gala Opening; Two retractable banners fresh off the press in our production warehouse.

From left to right: A gamma banner outside of the Out on Screen Gala Opening; Two retractable banners fresh off the press in our production warehouse.

The Vancouver Queer Film Festival has some great new banners at a discount as a result of another print partnership, this time with their organizer, Out on Screen.

From left to right: Early Bird Winner, Tyler; 2nd Place winner, Kylee; Grand Prize Winner, Zoltan

From left to right: Early Bird Winner, Tyler; 2nd Place winner, Kylee; Grand Prize Winner, Zoltan

This was also the year of our first ever #PrideFlag social media contest! In an effort to encourage people to proudly show their Pride Flags all around Vancouver, we launched a photography contest that yielded some great shots and a few excellent winners that helped raise the profile of the Pride flag even further.

From left to right: The Flag Shop Victoria takes part in the local Pride Parade; The Flag Shop London set up a booth at Niagara Pride.

From left to right: The Flag Shop Victoria takes part in the local Pride Parade; The Flag Shop London set up a booth at Niagara Pride.

Better still, it’s not just here in Vancouver that The Flag Shop is involved in Pride activities. Our store in London, Ontario had a great booth set up at Niagara Pride while The Flag Shop Victoria made a giant Pride flag and used a pick-up truck to drive it in the local Pride Parade!

All in all we made some great memories through this year’s Vancouver Pride season. Of course Pride issues aren’t just important at one time of year, so we’ll continue to grow and strengthen our participation in supporting LGBTQ+ people as an ally. What is coming next? I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.

The Honda Celebration: A Flag Shop ‘Tail’

Above: Celebration of Light banners in 2013 (left) and 2015 (right). The same banners were used with attached black tails for different event dates.

This year the Honda Celebration of Light is turning 25 and as seasoned Vancouverites know, some of the best viewing is from one of the city’s downtown bridges. Every year our client brand.LIVE, the event organizer, works with us at the Flag Shop to deck out the Granville Street bridge end to end with Celebration of Light street banners.

Something that The Flag Shop has been able to do to help reduce costs, and more importantly waste, for the event has been to help brand.LIVE and Celebration of Light re-use their street banners year after year.

Printed on 200 denier Dacron, the banners last far longer than the month or so that they are on display. Following the event, we give the banners a good cleaning and then store them safely for the next year. Then, to keep them current and informative, new tails are produced every year with the event dates listed and replaced on the bottom of the banners. This allows brand.LIVE to reuse the banners but lose none of their informative value.

Now that’s a bright idea!

Do you have a recurring event in your community? Street banner tails are a great way to get more mileage from your banners without missing a chance to inform your audience of a great event! http://www.flagshop.com/street-banners.php

Banners for No More Cruelty

No More Cruelty

No More Cruelty was founded by Crystal (top left), our marketing manager at The Flag Shop head office. Together with her sister Rosemary (top right), they advocate and assist with various animal rescue efforts by coordinating with various volunteers and rescue groups in Taiwan.

When Crystal mentioned to Susan, our President, that she had to borrow a flag from the pet store to promote “Don’t buy! Adopt a pet” concept while she was on holiday in Taiwan this past January, Susan offered to support her efforts in animal rescue. Two 24″ x 33.5″ custom banners made with Coast Display were donated by The Flag Shop, one will be used in Taiwan and one in Canada.

The above picture was taken at the Taipei International Airport in March 2014. Crystal was the volunteer ambassador to accompany these seven rescued dogs to Canada where they had new homes waiting for them.

See other causes The Flag Shop Vancouver supports.

Go Canada Go!

Both the women’s curling team and the women’s hockey team won gold medals today! Congratulations!

In that spirit, we punched up Tom Anderson’s Boxing Beaver flag design.

(Please note: the actual flag is not animated.)

Redecorating our showroom

We keep a mix of different examples of our products on hand in our upstairs corporate area to best show what our printers are capable of producing. Some of them are our own designs, some of them are second runs from previous jobs, and sometimes we see art come through that we like so much that we get permission to re-use it.

The Vancouver Aquarium has its Up Close exhibit coming up. As part of promoting it, they had blockout mesh banners made for the walkway next to the aquarium. We took that design and printed it on our Coast Display fabric and then attached that to an X Banner stand. Now it’s the first thing you see when you come upstairs!

The banners themselves went over well also:

“I did my walk through today and want to extend an extra huge thanks for once again making us look so amazingly good here at the Vancouver Aquarium.

Our banners are a big component of drawing in walking visitors from the park, the red is so vibrant, the animals tones are perfect, your team nailed it. Thank you so much.”

Some of our more personal jobs

We regularly put up street banners are up across the city. Our flags wave from a multitude of municipal flagpoles across the country. These are some of our day-to-day jobs.

While we are invited to participate in municipal life as part of our stock in trade, sometimes we find ourselves involved in more personal projects.

A couple of years ago, we made a beautiful custom chuppah for a wedding.

Custom Chuppah

And this week, we were contacted to make a banner to honour the life of a beloved member of the Vancouver community. We are honoured to have been chosen to make the flag and banner to commemorate the life of North Shore Rescue team leader Tim Jones.

His celebration of life on Saturday, January 25th includes a parade at 10:30 a.m. and ceremony at noon.

Donations in Tim Jones’s memory can be made to North Shore Search and Rescue at https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/3gPPf.

Thank you, Tim, for your service, and thank you, North Shore Rescue, for letting us participate.

Street banners for Honda Celebration of Light

The 23rd Celebration of Light fireworks competition is coming up soon! A staple of Vancouver summers, you can watch them from your favourite vantage point on July 27th, July 31st, and August 3rd.

Right now, you can catch the street banners we made for them on the Granville Street Bridge.

Celebration of Lights Street Banners

See more banners we’ve made for major events in our gallery.

Khatsahlano! is this weekend

With Khatsahlano, Vancouver’s biggest free music and arts festival coming up on Saturday, July 13th, there’s been some last minute scrambling around the office to get all of their signage out the door. In addition, Susan has been going to press conferences in her role as president of the West 4th BIA.

Here’s a few places she’s been quoted or pictured so far:

We’ll post photos of the festival next week!

Photo from BongoJack Media

Throwback Friday – Battlestar Galactica edition

Battlestar Galactica

We’ve had this photo in our gallery for a long time, sitting there without much context. It’s from a job we did almost a decade ago for the Battlestar Galactica miniseries/pilot.

You can watch the scene it was in here. And here‘s an old industry article written about us and our involvement with it.

You can see more flags and banners we made for film and television in our gallery.