The Big Picture - March 2014 - (Page 12)

inside output inside output The Whys and Wherefores Of Interior Décor By Craig Miller D üsseldorf, Germany, isn't a location I would typically refer to as my ideal vacation spot in November. After all, I'm used to temperatures in the mid-50s and sunny skies at that time of the year here in Vegas. Yet this is just what I'm considering. Why? Because the Printed Interior Decoration (PID) conference (printedinteriordecoration. org) takes place there, November 26-27. "The conference will look closer at the state-of-the-art printing solutions on home textiles, ceramics, flooring, wallpapers, wallcoverings, wall murals, glass-decoration solutions, furniture, upholstery, and many other solutions," according to the event's website. Cool! I want to be there for two reasons. First, I love going to international conferences. It's great to meet colleagues from outside the US; plus I get a fresh perspective on our industry and bring home some fresh ideas. Second, our company has been producing printed interior-decoration products for nearly 20 years - this has become a very important market segment for us. I'm hoping by going to PID I can mingle with company owners and managers who are experts in this arena. I believe it's simply unwise for anyone who owns a large-format digital printer to ignore the interior-decorating market. There are plenty of reasonably easy-to-produce, printed interior-décor products available. And, profit margins in this market niche are significantly better than selling printing signs or vehicle wraps, to name just two product categories. It's all about the wall Wallcoverings - aka wallpaper - are the natural starting point when it comes to printed interior décor. The good news CRaIG MIllER is a principal shareholder in Las Vegas-based Pictographics, (pictographics.net) where he is also director of military and law-enforcement projects, the company's defense-contracting division. 12 THE BIG PICTURE March 2014 is almost anyone with a wide-format printer can produce wallcoverings, but keep in mind that I'm not talking about sheets of decal vinyl like we would use for a bus wrap. I don't consider decal vinyl stuck on walls to be interior decorating. Sheets of sticky-back vinyl are fine for temporary wall graphics - but the big problem with "decal-based" wallcoverings is that they're so thin they'll reveal every surface irregularity. True wallcoverings come in multiple textures from suede to stucco, up to an 18-mil thickness. Digitally printed, interior-decorating wallcoverings really require panels that install with wallpaper paste or other adhesive and have a perfect butt seam. The standard widths for wallcoverings are 27 and 54 inches; digitally printed wallcoverings are typically 55 to 56 inches in width and are cut down to 54 inches for installation. Now, in considering a digitally printed wall, the first thing that might naturally come to mind is a mural. And although wall murals were once very popular, these supersized pictures on walls have become somewhat passé for interior décor. Instead, the growing demand is for decorative and step-and-repeat patterns - visually appealing designs featuring exacting color palettes. A few more points about wallcoverings: * Most of the walls we produce are 10-feet tall or less; so wide expanses of printed wallcoverings can be produced without a seam. Admittedly, it takes an amazing paperhanger to work with pieces this big, but we've found that customers go nuts over printed walls with no seams. * The availability of printable metallic and chrome substrates has been a hot development in wallcoverings. When these are used in conjunction with white ink, you can produce some truly amazing effects. * Other substrate finishes like brushed metal are also available, but keep in mind you're not limited to off-theshelf products: You can also create your own finishes. In one project, we took ordinary vinyl wallcovering media and added a hand-applied silver leaf. We printed over the silver-leaf face with floral patterns using an underlayment of white ink. The designers were careful to leave considerable silver leaf exposed. The end result: >33 http://www.pictographics.net http://www.pictographics.net

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Big Picture - March 2014

The Big Picture - March 2014
Contents
InSight
Wide Angle
Up Front
Inside Output
Business + Management
White-Hot: Five Shops Explore White Ink
Great Ideas: ISA Expo 2014
Front- and Back-End Tools
R+D
Job Log

The Big Picture - March 2014