My old boss was an advocate of managing by wondering around. His point was that you can’t manage what you don’t know. Boy is this ever self evident as you will see below. With that in mind I try to wonder around a lot. In fact it drives my family crazy when we go out. I’m always looking at how graphics are printed, what material they are printed on and how they are attached and displayed. It’s all eye candy for me.
Last week I was walking into a store and on the window they had pictures of little Christmas ornaments on it. It looked almost as if they were floating on the window. I thought, wow, how cool is that. After looking closer with the “fingernail test” it was apparent the graphics were simply printed on a clear window graphic material (with a white ink backer). That was the beginning of an “ah ha” moment.
As life’s karma would have it, what happens next but I get a call from a client on the following Monday wanting to print true window clings to go inside a car window facing outwards. At first I was like, uh, I don’t think we can easily do that. Then it dawned on me we could print these on clear window cling material with the image printed wrong reading and a white ink backer. Then when it is placed inside the windshield, voila, the image facing outwards is right reading and looks great. Long story short… we imaged a test file, made a few revisions and voila, we got an order for 2000 more. Woo hoo!
I also have a regret because a few weeks ago a client showed me a cool looking window concept and wanted it printed on an adhesive free material so anyone could hang the graphic. The thin white lines in the graphic gave me pause because white it would be easy enough to cut them, I was pretty sure something that narrow would tear during the install. However, what I did not think of till writing this article was that we could print the entire graphic as a big rectangle on our clear window cling material and using white ink and color, we could easily achieve this. How cool is that.
If you have an idea or suggestion for something fun and unique like this in your home or business. Let me know and we can explore it further.
