Punchestown Racecourse

Client: Punchestown Racecourse, just outside Naas, Co Kildare is the home of Irish Jumps Racing. Every April it hosts the main horseracing festival of the Irish National Hunt Season. With millions of euro of prizemoney on offer, it attracts huge crowds and many of the best horses from Ireland and the UK. This year the festival drew a record crowd of 127,000 people through the turnstiles. Punchestown also hosts many other large-scale events, including trade shows and concerts.

Project: CSS Signs have worked with Punchestown for well over a decade, providing event signage for many festivals. We always remain on call 24/7 for the duration of events for any last-minute changes.

Over the past year Punchestown has undergone a multimillion euro redevelopment. This involved redesigning and refurbishing the main Grand Stand, followed by a major new build, ‘The Hunt Stand’. The Hunt Stand is a superbly located building, overlooking the last fence. It houses a variety of facilities including The Bollinger Lounge, The Goffs Owners & Trainers Bar, The Corinthian (upmarket restaurant), The Vantage Room (corporate box for entertaining up to 40 guests), The Festival Bar and The Fox Den Café. We worked closely with the Punchestown marketing team to design signs and graphics for these facilities.

We also collaborated with other consultants. Dynamo, the branding agency, were responsible for the Goffs Owners and Trainers Lounge. We worked with them to help implement their client’s brief. We printed and fitted wall graphics and installed gold metallic raised letters and vinyls.

We also worked on an interesting and challenging job with Dynamo. Some of the most famous horses sold through Goffs down the years were the likes of Arkle, Hardy Eustace and Hurricane Fly. The client wanted images of these legends as etched effect impressions on glass panels within the Lounge. This called for several iterations to achieve the right effect. They were then printed using an ultra-clear vinyl and fitted directly to the toughened glass panels.

Number 10 Design looked after interior design of facilities in the Grand Stand and The Hunt Stand, and in setting up the corporate hospitality arena. CSS Signs assisted them in branding these areas.