After 10+ years of using PVC, Team 1676 is looking to redo the back wall of our pit. Looking for suggestions of unique/interesting/effective back walls that you’ve seen around competition, with the main goal being to display blue/team banners or showcase other team attributes and accomplishments. Can be anything from 525’s “hanging” blue banners to 103’s “blue banners on felt”.
EDIT: Ease of assembly is also a big factor for consideration.
Since your team has 300 square feet of blue banners, why stop with the back wall? You could cover three walls of your pit with them.
Can I be honest. I think hanging banners for previous years is gauche.
Fixed it for you. The teams you want to know you won something, already do.
Not if they had 8 X 8 pits… they’d run out of room!
4607 has done game-specific team banners in our pits for the last 5 years. They definitely draw a ton of attention at competitions! Here’s an example (they’ve gotten better year after year… I just can’t find good pictures from recent years). We used to hang banners but quit doing so a while back for similar reasons as Sam and Justin described.
False walls make for great storage.
(And they do display a lot of memorabilia on the walls.)
Had to go there didn’t you?
Well technically North Carolina went there. I’m just assessing the critically important effects including how many banners teams are able to show off on the interior of their pit:
300 square feet of banners (first of all that’s really good)
8 feet X 10 feet X 3 walls is 240 square feet. That’s like… not enough room for all the banners!
Doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t want a conversation piece for the judges and random visitors, though. Personally, having room for 2-3 banners would be about right: enough for the current or just previous season (depending where in the season you are), or maybe a Worlds banner from up to 2-3 seasons ago.
But, that leaves out the fact that teams may have their own banners, that are not Blue Banners, that they may want to display. Such banners can assist with finding the team in the pits, or include “additional information” about the team. Those banners would need to be factored in.
My team started making custom fabric pit walls last year, and I think it’s made our pit look much better. The walls are an integral part of our awards presentation, showing all of the different aspects of our outreach for our community. We get them printed at a local print shop, and the cost isn’t exorbitant. Here’s what ours looked like:
https://i.imgur.com/ikjTqfkl.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/ikjTqfk.jpg)
https://i.imgur.com/0G635Opl.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/0G635Op.jpg)
https://i.imgur.com/Of6sVptl.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Of6sVpt.jpg)
We decided to just use it to show our outreach and team information. But once you are printing custom walls each year, you can add other things too. You can print on shrunk copies of all your blue banners, similar to what 103 does but printed on rather than attached to felt. I personally like the shrunk banners better, because it shows off your team’s past successes but doesn’t stick out in your face as showing off.
https://i.imgur.com/LqjKqQDl.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/LqjKqQD.jpg)
You can also print renders and descriptions of your robot, like what 1574 does most years. This does require you to wait to print the walls until halfway through the season, which probably will make them cost more than with our few month lead time.
https://i.imgur.com/1IVRyNbl.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/1IVRyNb.jpg)
We’ve been working with our amazing sponsor for the last 8 years, “Studio Keren”, on printing those very large posters. Our partnership allows us a zero lead time - most of the time, we send the graphics and get those posters printed the day after for free. Without them, there’s no way we would have been able to do it!
personally I’m a big fan of “nothing”
I wonder if there’s a measurable relationship between ambient light and competitiveness.
My team always created a customized banner for each game. We also put 2 TV’s in the back to show videos about our team and what we’ve been working on all year. It’s very cool to see everyone stopping as they walk by to watch part of the videos.
As 103’s pit has been posted a few times, please let me know if you have any specific questions.
We’ve had the mini-banners for quite some time now, and besides being significantly more convenient, we also feel they are more subtle/understated than the full blown banners. I don’t think we even used them at all this year, but they are still in our possession… Somewhere…
This past year we updated our pit with a simpler, less busy backing that is mostly white with our team name written in blue. Hanging from this is our sponsors that we printed and laminated onto two large sheets. We may do something different this year. That all sits behind 2 toolboxes with working surfaces on top of them.
A team I’d like to point out for a beautiful pit is 1218 (who our new pit is mostly inspired by). It’s always very clean, and the white curtain not only looks really slick, but it completely brightens up the pit as well.
Light is definitely something to consider, and bright colors help immensely.
Edit: This thread may help you out a bit as well.
I mean NC is growing so much we don’t have room for all the teams in the pits… even with 8’x8’ ones… :rolleyes:
For those playing at home: It’s a 36% reduction in pit space while NC has not grown by 36% of teams. Never mind that we had 10’x10’ pits last year and 3/5 venues remain the same as they were.
What was this thread about? Hanging banners? Don’t do it. #superPitNotSuperficialPit
Ease of assembly when the space given to you is not 10’ x 10’ is important.
Bonus points for being able to make effective use of being given space in a corner location with access on two sides.
What if you didn’t put up walls between your team others, possibly facilitating better collaboration and communication?
That was actually one of the big reasons we opted for only a single taller road case and not two of them and why we have long since stopped erecting walls and tents in our pit.
