Abacus wraps giant beanies for Fight MND foundation

The Fight Motor Neuron Disease (MND) foundation and their iconic BIG Freeze, Beanie & Big Slide at the MCG has become synonymous with the Queens Birthday weekend. This year, while there was no event at the G, it didn’t dampen the spirits of the foundation nor did it stop Australians supporting the charity - raising over 11 million dollars through beanie sales and donations. The foundation contacted Abacus Visual Solutions with a great promotional idea - to wrap a giant, (2.5m) fiberglass beanie and the team jumped at the chance to help out. The brief was: “We will get them dropped off at your factory and you can go from there.” When asked about a design file to work from, Abacus was given an actual beanie to replicate. “Nothing quite like a challenge,” says Rob Tennant, Director at Abacus, and tells us more ...

“You can’t quite prepare yourself for a 2.5m high beanie until you’re standing next to it, it certainly was big. Our design team set off by designing the beanie to an exact match, even including the stitching and texture of the wool. Then the install team started templating it - to know how to set the print files, as it wasn’t just a simple curve. We replicated the shape of a real beanie with it convexing vertically coupled with it concaving horizontally, creating lots of bumps along the way,” says Rob.

Like a lot of jobs that Abacus has handled, Rob says the team knew it would be a challenge. “But that’s half the fun. We love to push boundaries – both creatively and using different mediums. We used Avery MPI1105 with DOL6400 laminate (kindly donated by Graphic Art Mart), and took to wrapping it slowly, fighting the direction that the vinyl wanted to go as it made its way around the curves.”

“Fair to say, it paid off and the finished product blew everyone away,” says Rob, pointing out that the beanie was a prominent feature outside the Lexus Centre for a week and was on display at Chadstone Shopping Centre over the long weekend - where the MND team sold thousands of beanies amongst many other venues.

“The team at Abacus are stoked to be a part of this year’s campaign for Fight MND and we’re glad to help in a small way towards the charity raising record funds and look forward to what challenges they present us with next year,” he concludes.

The giant beanies can be seen around the streets of Melbourne, and are impossible to miss at 2.5m high. 

Human sized beanies are on sale to raise funds for Fight MND and can be purchased online  at https://fightmnd.org.au