Sneaker Ball 2020 (or SNKR Ball 2020 to those in the know) is an annual Black History Month event, sponsored by Nike’s Black Employee Network. It’s a thank-you celebration for those partners who have helped support the cause of black empowerment and social change throughout the year.

Nike wanted to create an immersive environment for the event; that meant bringing many vendors together in a complex orchestrated build-out of the space – including live music, video, shoe displays, and a living garden of grass, moss, ferns, and flowers.

But first up on the run of show was Premier Press.  Nike asked us to design the interior shell of the two-level space to house the festivities. They provided photo and graphic assets, and we created the overall look and feel of the space. We dressed the walls, floor-to-ceiling, with dramatic photo collages and wood-grain and concrete-texture printed fabric. The special temporary wall covering, PhotoTex, has an adhesive backing that makes it easy to put up and easy to remove without damaging the walls. And unlike standard wall vinyl, PhotoTex is PVC-free, so it’s environmentally friendly – something that’s important to Nike and to us at Premier. 

We even built a rigid covering to disguise the partition doors as a concrete column, in order to complete the illusion of a lush outdoor urban environment, and covered the windows with a semi-transparent film to keep the party private.

At the last minute, Nike discovered that their video projection for a shoe was splashing light onto the wall behind it, so we came back in and covered that area with black vinyl. Problem solved.

Black community VIPs, celebrities, Nike employees, and volunteers arrived wearing their favorite Nikes, packed the space, and partied all night. It was an event to remember.

This video from P-Town Media shows how the environment enhanced the event.

The Chiles Center arena is home to the University of Portland Pilots athletic teams, and host to countless celebrities and dignitaries in its 35-year history. And now, it also houses a VIP space where special donors can meet before games and at half-time. Premier Press designed, spec’d, fabricated and installed all the elements of the new Pilot Club.

The mastermind behind the design was Premier’s creative team, with fabrication and installation muscle from our project management team. The plan included recommendations for furniture, fixtures, benches, faux hedges, planters, lighting, and environmental graphics. We wanted to give the space a warm, welcoming, club-style feeling, with, of course, Pilot branding throughout.

Where there used to be fluorescent white lighting and pipe-and-drape walls, we softened the feel of the space with overhead drop-down lights, and installed a set wall with LEDs creating a wall wash in the Pilots’ signature purple. A main wall feature is a large Pilot anchor logo, also backlit with purple LEDs. The bar is built of plywood with color-core white laminate, and we included a debossed Pilot logo on the front.

The space is surrounded by a recreational running track in the Pilots’ signature purple color. Our challenge was to match Pilot Purple across all materials – the fabric banners, the paint for the wall graphics, and the vinyl for the bench seating. We took samples from the track surface in order to create custom paint for the walls and custom ink for the banners. As for the vinyl seats, we found an existing source that was a great match.

The new space not only looks great, it’s practical. The bar also serves as a storage area, and some of the set walls are on casters so they can be easily moved to access a storage area for tables and chairs.

The Pilot Club opened in 2020 for the basketball season, and we hope it will be used and enjoyed for many years to come.

How many print shops does it take to create dozens of materials for an event with 10,000 attendees, with 48 hours from design files to finished product?

One.

For the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, Premier Press has become the efficient single source for all the way-finding signage, venue banners, vehicle graphics, and programs, as well as the keepsake limited-edition posters and attendee badges needed for the annual event celebrating classic video and arcade games.

In 2014, Sean Harrington and an all-volunteer board of directors were organizing the 9th annual Portland Retro Gaming Expo.

In addition to all the other details they had to manage, their collateral needs included everything from small-formal digital and offset printing to wide-format flexible and rigid signage – a workload that would over-tax the small poster and sign shops around town. Sean decided to have one printer handle the street pole banners for outside the venue, and spread out the other print projects to different shops. Of course, each project would have to be overseen separately. And of course, he was working on very tight turnaround times. It was a monumental task.

Then he found Premier. He met with our account director Mitch Craghead, had a tour of our facility, and was so impressed that he no longer felt the need to go anywhere else. We were the one printer with the fastest, most sophisticated large and small printers operating 24 hours a day, and the customer service to get it all done — often with just 48 hours from receipt of the graphics to finished product.

After finishing our sixth year of working together, the process is as fluid as a well-oiled machine. We start talking months in advance, mapping out our logistics plan, and building a countdown schedule that worked back from the event date. We produce all the street pole banners, more than 50 one-off free-standing way-finding signage, a dozen giant hanging banners, 6,000 multi-page programs, collectible artist-commissioned posters, and the wildly popular attendee badges that Sean designs as tributes to key points in video game history.

Consolidating all his branded materials with one vendor has given Sean the quality control he wants for his printed pieces, and more time to devote his energies to all the other areas of the Expo that need his oversight.

Every year after the event is over and Sean gets a couple days of sleep, he sends us a thank-you email, like this one:

“I just wanted to thank you and your team for helping to make the Portland Retro Gaming Expo a success. The programs, banners, signs, and of course badges, all looked great! We received more compliments that we could count. We are lucky to be able to count on you for the consistent quality and ability to come through for us. So thank you again for everything that you’ve done.”

It’s been gratifying for us to have the trust and appreciation from such a great long-time partner. Thanks, Sean.

When the always-sold-out Portland Timbers upgraded their stadium, adidas naturally wanted to follow suit. In their suite, that is. They owned a luxury box with a spectacular view of the pitch and the famously zealous Timbers fans, and wanted the décor of the space to reflect the excitement. They gave us access to all their soccer imagery and adidas branding, and told us simply, “Make it cool.” So we did.

Step one was to visit the newly “reborn” stadium, now one of the largest soccer-specific arenas in the MLS, and survey the adidas suite to see what the design opportunities were. We were inspired, to say the least. 

We knew we wanted to surround the space with all things soccer: photos of athletes, play diagrams, and anthemic graphics. So for one wall, we designed a black-and-white montage mural; on the opposite wall is a collection of custom-framed graphics and photos, including shadow boxes showcasing adidas’s latest cleat designs.  

And for the back wall, our designers came up with an idea to make an impact on fans beyond just the visitors to the suite. It’s a custom neon sign that communicates the adidas core value “creators unite,” visible from the field and to the other suites.   

Premier managed the project from concept to installation, and as always, it was a pleasure to work with the adidas team. And it was great to have a part in the “rebirth” of the Timbers stadium.  

The adidas-sponsored Upper 90 Soccer Center located in Astoria, Queens, NY is much more than a retailer of specialty soccer equipment. It’s an environment devoted to the enjoyment of urban soccer. And Premier Press’ creative team entered the pitch with a complete re-set of their activation space.

Upper 90 Soccer Center was undergoing a major renovation intended to showcase adidas, continuing the partnership that began in 2016, and repurpose their existing space to provide the dense urban neighborhood with a much-needed recreation area. The remodel included adding a second soccer field, lobby/viewing area, party room, gaming center, event lounge, changing room, and café. adidas knew just which players to bring in to accomplish the goal: Premier Press.

We removed the old graphics from the existing spaces. We patched. We prepped. We primed. And we painted. Then we installed new graphics, all designed to be adidas-and-New-York-centric. That meant capturing the edgy essence of urban soccer.

Premier’s awesome creative team created a montage of images – photography, illustration, graphic design, color fields, text, logos, and play diagrams, and then mixed and matched them in graffiti-inspired patterns, punctuated by adidas’s “creators” theme.

Thanks to a lot of skillful give and go with our partners at adidas, the re-set was accomplished smoothly and in time for a successful, fun grand opening event.

For the 90^th annual MLB all-star game in Cleveland this summer, Supercuts engaged New-York-based Excel Sports Management to find an all-star team who could activate an experiential marketing event like no other. Premier’s concept presentation knocked it out of the park and won us the assignment to build a custom pop-up hairstyling station from inspiration to installation.

Supercuts wanted to engage people with their new marketing slogan, “Don’t take your hair for granted. Take it to Supercuts.”  They wanted to do something big. Really big.

With the help of Excel Sports Management, they secured an area in the courtyard of the Cleveland Indians’ Progressive field for the day of the MLB all-star game, and asked for idea submissions for a pop-up studio that would offer free haircuts to fans.

Premier’s presentation won the day. We designed a 40’x16’ freestanding cargo container, open on one side, and outfitted so visitors would feel as if they’d walked into a dugout. The floor was covered with AstroTurf and painted with a batter’s box, and divided with low mesh barriers. The entire space was curated to perfect the experience – lockers, aluminum benches, team logos, and a photo op area with a “throne” shaped like a baseball glove in front of a backdrop of baseball bats. The salon area had three fully functional chairs, sinks, mirrors, and supply trolleys.

The container walls were retrofitted to swing down on hydraulic systems, and we built stairs leading to a viewing area on top of the container. We sourced all the materials, equipment, fixtures, furniture, power and water supplies; we even had misters to provide relief from the humidity. Everything was custom-built, so Premier was on hand to provide project management on-site for a week leading up to the event.

It was a huge success. Visitors lined up to get their hair dyed in their team’s colors, have a logo etched into their cut, or just get a great new look from Supercuts’ expert stylists.

Thanks to the fans, to Excel Sports Management, to MLB, and to Supercuts for letting us be a part of such a major league event.

Unico renovations are known for their architectural and interior design aesthetics, so when they created new spaces for the Sixth+ Main building in downtown Portland, the branded visuals had to work in perfect harmony. They wanted a partner who could help design, execute, and install their vision. Enter Premier.

The renovation included an amenities area, bike parking (a must in Portland), and a fitness center. Unico shopped around for companies who had high-level creative ideas, and ones who could deliver premium build solutions. Only one could provide both.

We came up with a bold, kinetic geometric design that pays homage to the CMYK building blocks of color printing, dynamically paired with black and white photography. Next came production design and a site survey to ensure that the execution would be flawless. Then we went to work doing what we’ve excelled in since the beginning – large format printing and custom sign building. Finally, we delivered the materials and installed them expertly into the designated spaces. The result is a branded, integrated experience for tenants who enjoy the amenities of this newly modernized building. Unico even asked us to help name the new fitness center. It’s now known as 6th + Fit.

Premier would like to thank Unico for the opportunity to be a part of this turnkey project. It was a match made in Portland.

adidas’ core line of women’s shoes and clothing was designed to be mixed and matched, to evolve with their customers’ busy and varied days. Premier helped translate the initiative’s social media narrative approach into a physical expression at retail.

The Women’s initiative positions the new adidas product line as an expression of the attitudes and activities of select key female influencers. The visual elements of the campaign include quotes from the influencers, lifestyle photos, and presentations of the shoes and outfits in combinations that fit their various activities throughout the day.

Premier’s challenge was to design and install fixtures and graphics that would work well for different store sizes, and that would be easy for store employees to refresh. For the feature window bays, we created a variety of modular elements using the most advanced materials: hanging banners, light boxes, staggered-height silicone-edge graphics, and magnetic receptive graphics applied directly to a magnetic back wall. The back wall also featured the adidas logo in a dimensional vinyl window cling. And we chose LED-lit acrylic frames to display the footwear itself.

We also designed and produced a complete suite of interior graphics for gondolas, footwear towers and end caps, launch zones, and employee tech cards.

For all of us at Premier, it’s always inspiring to partner with adidas. As a woman-owned company, we’re especially proud to have been a part of this women-centric initiative.

It was a complete turnkey project, from concept to installation.

adidas asked Premier to design and create a new look for every aspect of the store — signage, dressing rooms, fixtures, and graphics.

Premier would like to thank adidas for entrusting us with this exciting project, and congratulate FC Cincinnati on their new major-league status.

Nike has expanded their retail presence with their new flagship store in the heart of New York’s Fifth Avenue shopping district.

The cutting-edge House Of Innovation features 68,000 square feet of space over six floors.

The products created for the House of Innovation in NYC is a great testament to the 30 year relationship between Nike and Premier. Our team has molded our services to accommodate the custom lift required on each project. We are thankful that the friendship has grown and continues to develop as we live on the edge of perfection and speed.

Here’s some interesting statistics for the projects Premier Press was involved in for Nike’s House of Innovation project:

Environmental Graphic and Paint

• 23,100 yards of vinyl tape used to create the Speed Shop wall and floor graphics
• 21 unique designs and 4 different styles of tape used throughout the space
• 1512 lineal feet of printed wall vinyl used through the store
• Column paint ad wayfinding on all floors
• 25% more work added to Premier’s initial scope while in process
• Initial 3 week install timeline compressed to 12 days
• Over 225 hrs of install hours

Nike 650 store specific bags and packaging

• 30,000   Foundational Medium Shopping Totes
• 30,000   Foundational Large Shopping Totes
• 5,000     Expert Home Medium Shopping Totes
• 7,000     Expert Home Large Shopping Totes
• 1,500     Vault Fabric Tyvek Bags

That’s over 15 Tons of bags!

You can read more about Nike’s House of Innovation on Sneaker News and on nike.com.