Big Picture

WIDE-FORMAT’S OPTIONS keep multiplying — more surfaces, more colors, more ways to finish a job. This month’s roundup features a “Stays Cool” OOH display that ships fully assembled, a vehicle wrap film line adding five new colors, a UV flatbed that prints directly on objects up to 9.5 in. thick, a dual-gantry laser that cuts metal and acrylic alike, a 143-color digital printin...

ADVENTURER ALASTAIR HUMPHREYS coined a term every business owner knows in their bones: the Doorstep Mile. The most exhausting part of any journey isn’t the climb — it’s getting out of the house. That website redesign you’ve been meaning to do? That new event series? The mountain isn’t the problem. Your front door is. New research from UC Santa Barbara confirms it: naming what...

HERE ARE A FEW MORE online-only management tips for wide-format shop owners who’ve read our July-August Big Picture lead, “Boss Level”.

The setback is inevitable. Whether it ends the story is up to you.

MANAGEMENT IS DOING THINGS right,” Peter Drucker famously said; “leadership is doing the right things.” Run a wide-format shop and nobody lets you pick just one — you’re on the hook for both, all day, every day. Call it the ultimate boss level. Here’s the good news: it’s a game, and the rules don’t really change. The edition updates — new gear, new substrates, a new generatio...

CONSIDER THIS YOUR CHEAT SHEET. Thirteen of the best ideas from our July/August issue, in one place — no fluff, no filler, and no need to pretend you read the whole magazine.

1. Solve the client’s real problem, not their stated one. The Speed Art Museum asked Unified Sign for interior opaque vinyl to block a construction site outside its glass atrium. S...