“No Man is an Island.”
Posted by Rick Sader on October 27, 2010 at 1:17 pmBeing in business FOR yourself doesn’t mean being in business BY yourself. A recent wall mural project was yet another example of why this is so true.
I was recently contacted by a local architectural firm to produce a wall mural. Over the years, I would occasionally stop in to this firm’s office to give them various print samples used for window graphics, non-slip floor graphics, wall murals, etc. So one day, when one of their clients asked about getting a big wall mural, they thought of Lone Eagle. Nice! So the local architects were my first partner.
Typically, a new mural job involves working with the client to determine what kind of image they have in mind for their space. Then it’s time to hunt down the right stock photography, or hire a photographer, or design the proper vector graphics, or some combination of those. In this case, the client had already picked out the image they wanted from the stock of a local photographer. Luckily, he had shot it using 6×7 medium format film. Whew! So, now I had identified my second partner in this job.
The next step was to get the photographer’s med-format film into the hands of a high-end professional with a drum scanner. In this case, the film was scanned at 11,000 ppi, using the proper bit depth and color mode which then gave me a beautiful digital file to work with. So now my third partner successfully completed his portion of this job.
Now it was my turn. The 10’ x 25’ wall mural was printed in seven ten-foot long strips at 720dpi, 16-pass using a Roland 545ex eco-SOL printer. The media used was Dreamscape’s vinyl wall mural media. The client picked out the “Mystical” texture – good choice. After printing & drying overnight, each panel received two coats of Dreamscape’s Protex3 satin-finish liquid laminate. This gives the prints a beautiful surface finish as well as protection from water, dirt, pollution, smudging, fade, etc. So I guess you could say that my media supplier was my fourth partner since I’ve asked them lots of questions over the years and buy lots of my supplies from them.
My fifth and final partner in this job was the installer. It’s easy to image everything going well up to this point but then turning out terrible if the installation wasn’t right. My partner here was a local wallpaper hanger and he did an outstanding job. Man, this guy knows his stuff. I inspected the mural when he was done & I was impressed that the seams were so smooth and the image lined up so well. Partner #5 rocks!
Here’s a photo of the end result. When the client gets some time, they’ll build a hardwood border around the perimeter to frame it in. When I get some time, I’ll forward the link to this blog post to all of my partners and say “thanks” for a job well done – by ALL of us.
“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
Posted by Rick Sader on October 24, 2010 at 10:22 amA new client called me the other day in desperate need to get his tradeshow graphics printed quickly and shipped across the country the next day. He had had a bad experience with a different print shop. At the last minute, the other shop had delivered a bunch of tradeshow banners that were just awful; the black was a dull brownish color, the product photos looked “furry” (really… furry!), there was lots of banding, and the contrast was off. He showed me one…. these banners looked horrible. Later, when he picked up his graphics from my shop, he was thrilled and told me how ‘lucky’ I was that I could do such great work so quickly.
After he left, I thought to myself “LUCKY?! Hmmmmm….maybe I WAS lucky.”
• ‘lucky’ that I had purchased a $30k, state-of-the-art mild-solvent inkjet printer.
• ‘lucky’ that I had made a beautiful ICC profile for the media he wanted.
• ‘lucky’ that I had enough ink & media on hand to complete his entire job quickly.
• ‘lucky’ enough to know to print at 720dpi, 16-pass (i.e., high-quality mode) in order to get the high print quality necessary for display at a tradeshow.
• ‘lucky’ enough to have on my website a method for him to conveniently upload his eight 380MB files to my shop overnight (www.YouSendIt.com).
Well, as you may have guessed by now, none of this is luck at all. All of the capabilities listed above were the result of careful forethought and preparation. The other shop didn’t have a decent ICC profile (they didn’t even know what an ICC profile IS!!). And they printed in “production mode”, i.e., low resolution & low number of passes in order to just crank the job out fast. As a result, there was absolutely NO control over color, ink limits, linearization, etc…. a sure recipe for terrible print quality.
The title of this blog entry is a quote from Samuel Goldwyn, the filmmaker. I’m not sure exactly what he was referring to at the time, but I’m willing to bet it was in response to someone accusing him of being ‘lucky’ upon seeing his success.