Big Picture - June/July 2018 - 16

inside output

Searching
for the Unicorn
How to find - or create - revolutionary products and applications completely unique
to our wide-format world. | by Craig Miller

n 2013, venture capitalist Aileen Lee began referring to

startup companies that attained a billion-dollar valuation
as becoming a member of the "unicorn club." The term
"unicorn" evolved into anything so unique that it's almost
unattainable.
The unicorn I find myself constantly searching for - or
hoping to invent - is any product totally unique to our market.
Something, hopefully, no one has ever seen before or maybe
even contemplated. And once it's revealed to our clients, they
must have it. But here's the most important variable: They
have a choice of where to buy this unicorn product. They can
buy it from us, or... they can buy it from us.

BIG PICTURE

June/July 2018

BACK TO THE FUTURE
I searched my memory bank and tried to remember products
I thought would be unicorns. One that comes to mind is
lenticular. I remember the first time I saw it. OMG! Printed 3D
images on a flat surface. With the A-B flip, if you looked at the
image from a slightly different angle, the image changed. This
progressed to producing a few frames of a video. Why did this
product not become a unicorn? I think once you saw it a few
times the "wonder" wore off. Plus, it was expensive compared
to a simple, but high-quality 2D print. Close, but no cigar.
I would venture to guess not many of us are engaged in
producing lenticular printing in 2018. What are some of the
unicorn-like products and technologies of the past that many
of us still produce today?
Dye sublimation to fabric was certainly a unicorn in '96
and '97. (There were only four of us producing dye sub in the
CRAIG MILLER is a principal shareholder in Las Vegas-

based Pictographics (pictographics.net) where he is also director
of military and law-enforcement projects.

US, as I recall.) Now, almost all of us utilize dye sublimation as
a core printing method. What was "rocket science" is now routine. This is a great example of how unicorns are born and
how they die.
Another dead unicorn from that same period is CNC
routing or digitally contour cutting prints before the dawn of
i-cut technology. Customers were blown away, which helped
us land a major client that's still with us today.
Another unicorn is digitally printed commercial wallcoverings. I think it was '97 when we were asked to beta test a
product called Wallternatives. We became one of a handful of
companies in the world producing digital commercial
wallpaper that involved an ingenious electrostatic print
transfer to the adhesive side of a clear film. It was a great
unicorn until solvent-printed, and, later, UV-cured commercial
wallcoverings hit the market.
Notice all of these examples are from the mid- to late-1990s.
Large- and grand-format printing technologies were not yet
settled. It's easier to find unicorns when technology is in the
early stages of its evolution. This was just as higher-resolution,

http://www.pictographics.net

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