Thanks to the skill of DLA Information Operations employees, the personnel at a Navy training school can now say they’re literally a part of their institution.
The Document Services team at Travis Air Force Base, California, created a mural made of the photos of 100 staff members for the Navy Technical Training Center Lackland’s Master-at-Arms “A” School in San Antonio, Texas. The finished product was installed in February.
The mural, a black-and-white photo collage, is over seven feet tall and almost 40 feet long. To make installation easier, the Travis team printed the mural in 12 panels of wall-action vinyl — the same material used to create large, wall-mounted cutouts of athletes.
Kathy Kruczek, graphic designer on the Travis team, cropped and edited the photos and arranged them so they would easily blend but still showcase each person as an integral part of the school. The finished file took about six hours to print.
“The technical skill to compose these pictures in the proper format, lay out the design and print the large images is exactly why Document Services exists. I’m proud to be a part of an organization that can directly support the warfighter in ways that make people say, ‘Wow!’,” said Nick Janik, Print Facilities director for the group.
The school trains more than 28,000 students every year to be masters-at-arms, who help maintain order with law enforcement and security on Navy ships and commands.
Sara Horvath, the school’s public affairs officer and the person who came up with the idea, said that even though the task was “a tall order,” the team’s work was “just wonderful.”
The Document Services employees at Travis are no strangers to large projects like this. They’re equipped with wide-format printers and materials for creating anything from decals to banners and museum displays.
And yes, even murals.