Channel 9's The Block innovative use of Wall Graphics

When design, print and signage service company Grafico was approached by popular Australian reality television series The Block at a trade show in 2014, the team may  not have anticipated that they would be involved in over five seasons of the show.

Image Magazine spoke to Damian Corney, Grafico’s owner and CEO, about the achievements and challenges of the overall experience.

Q. How did you get to work on The Block, and who was selected to participate as part of the Grafico design team?

A. Many years ago The Block contacted us at a trade show where we were exhibiting. Since then we’ve been involved in over five seasons of the show and even had a special episode filmed here at Grafico, where the contestants had to design their own wallpaper with our design team.

The Block pulls in pretty much every single person of our team at one stage or another.  I personally liaise with each of the contestants to help make their project ideas come to life. So that means many late nights and early mornings designing concepts alongside contestants in ‘interesting’ surroundings, all while being recorded by a full TV crew! It’s certainly one of the most interesting and crazy worksites you’ll ever work on.

Q. Provide a quick run through of all the projects you put together for The Block.

A. Wow there’s been SO many!  Over the seasons there’s been a few stand out projects such as the ‘Bath Tub’ wrap we did for ‘Caro & Kingi plus ‘Sticks and Wombat’s’ bathroom ‘mosaico digitale’ feature wall. There are also a few standout custom print wallpapers which we’re especially proud of - the majority of the designs have been designed in-house by our own design team, so it’s really pushed our creativity to design really ‘out there’ and amazing concepts in record time!

Last season (2019) really takes the cake in terms of the sheer number of projects coupled with an amazing group of contestants that were really willing to push the boundaries of design, and work with us to create truly bespoke spaces.

Q. What was your team’s favourite project?

A. Last season there were SO many amazing projects we were involved in - we were so proud of all the rooms/spaces, however, I’d have to say the courtyards we did were quite unique. One courtyard in Mitch & Mark’s home has an enormous 8.5m high wall of digital print media applied to colorbond panels and then the other courtyard for Jesse & Mel utilised our custom printed resin mosaic tiles ‘Mosaico Digitale’ which we air freighted in specifically in record time from Italy.

Q. What was your team’s most
challenging project?

A. While the courtyards were the largest, and of course challenging, as we had to import the mosaic tiles from Italy in time for filming - the most challenging would have to be the lift wells which were all wrapped in our custom print self-adhesive wallpaper. They were all three levels high, however working off scaffolding in a tight space was quite challenging. We also had to do four lift wells all at once as the lift company had to install the lifts the following day, so we had about five of our install team all on site on a Saturday once to install all the lift wells in one go! Quite a feat of coordination and planning by both our team plus the onsite builders who had to support us by constructing the appropriate scaffolding and then moving that up/down as we completed each section. All of this while being filmed by a camera crew and being listened to with our all our team having to wear microphones! Certainly NO privacy at the block!

Q. What was it like being a part of the show and meeting all the teams participating in the Block?

A. We love working with The Block - we’ve cemented a strong relationship with all the crew and made many friendships along the way with both the production crew as well as the actual contestants, and we have gone on to collaborate with them with
other projects.

I think both myself and our entire team get a kick out of being involved with the show - we’re working in a realm of some very large corporate sponsors and suppliers and truly showing that a small business can still ‘mix with the best’ in terms of working on the show and getting good promotional publicity from the works. It’s certainly broadcasted our brand to a much wider audience than we could ever achieve via other marketing methods.

Q. What have your learned from the
whole experience?

A. The main difficulty about working on The Block is the crazy on-site experience. The sheer amount of people you have to work with in one room, plus the extremely crazy deadlines to enable the jobs to be completed in time for room reveal. These often result in late nights/early mornings and weekends.

The other main challenge is you’re being listened to constantly via the microphones you’re all wearing and of course there are cameras EVERYWHERE so we’ve had to learn how to manage that and ensure we don’t say the wrong thing on camera! I think everyone in our team is quite savvy in that respect now.

Q. Plans for the future?

A. We’ve already been on-site for 2020’s season which is proving to be another challenging task. This time it will be five homes in Brighton, VIC. We’re excited to be a sponsor again of the show and are looking forward to tackling another season when filming commences later in 2020.