The Best Packing Ever

Continuing the story I started on 22 June: For the MAM printing job I started by printing the largest of the images, on a 24-inch roll of EEF. At a final size of 37 inches high X 24 inches wide (94 x 61 cm) the print required careful handling until I could get it packaged for delivery.

Next I made six prints on 11 x 17 inch sheets. That consumed the last of the EEF I had in appropriate sizes, putting the job on hold until I received the 24 x 30 inch sheets I'd ordered a few days earlier.

Most of my orders for paper and ink over the years have been with IT Supplies. They have the papers I prefer, the ink the 7900 uses, and much more. When I compare prices they are always competitive, and often the lowest. Shipping is free for orders over $149 (it had been $99 for a long time, but recently increased when they 'merged' with Atlex, with whom they've shared an address for years). It's pretty hard to place an order for less than that amount, which, at least in my case, means free shipping all the time.

The two boxes of 25 sheets would be large, heavy, and prone to shipping damage. Here in rural Montana, it's rare that a package arrives via UPS or FedEx, the main shippers, in good condition. Without exception the boxes arrive filthy, as if there's some kind of contest to see how cruddy they can make a package. And they often are smashed, with crunched corners, punctures and tears, and broken tape seals. If the corner of a paper box is crunched, you can be sure every single sheet in that box will have damaged corners. I've had to return too many packages to any number of suppliers because of this; the contents simply weren't packaged to accommodate whatever abuse the shipper might inflict. While the vendor has little control over that, I can fault them for embarrassingly bad packaging. The typical practice seems to be to fold and tape the bottom of the box, toss in the product, and then stuff bubble wrap, or a wad of crumpled craft paper, or a few inflated air pillows on top of the product, and then seal the box. This puts the product in direct contact with the bottom and at least one edge of the carton, with protective cushioning only on top at perhaps another edge.

With all of that in mind, I asked IT Supplies (via their ordering Web site) to please, please package the order carefully. I needed the paper right away; there'd be no time to return a damaged shipment and wait for a replacement (which may well be as damaged as the original).

A few days later the delivery arrived in an enormous 39 pound (18 kg) box. Inside I found enough crumpled craft paper to wrap the Golden Gate Bridge, miles of bubble-wrap, and two large boxes of EEF. All of this centered in a double-walled cardboard carton. A note on the packing slip, intended I'm sure for the warehouse crew who packaged the thing, simply said, "Please double-box."

Pictured above is the outer carton against the back of my 2010 Toyota RAV4, just to give you an idea of the scale. The dotted outline is my estimation of the size of the Epson boxes inside the carton. Those boxes looked perfect. IT Supplies did a great job, no doubt burning through much of the profit on this sale just to make sure it arrived here in good condition.  Nicely done, and thank you.

Interestingly, Epson's normally robust product boxes didn't fare so well. The cardboard bumpers that center the pack of paper inside the box were completely smashed, allowing the paper (which is inside a heavy plastic bag) to slide around. The condition of both boxes were identical. They looked perfect on the outside. It's not impossible that this damage happened before my boxes were packaged into the large outer carton, which contained so much packaging that the product should have withstood the worst UPS could do. Whatever the case, the paper was undamaged.

I've now completed the MAM job

(Other than being a long-time happy customer of IT Supplies, I've no affiliation with them, and did not benefit from this posting. I just wanted to pass on a story of what was, in my opinion, impressive customer service.)

  --Jay

Here's What 46 Prints Look Like

For several weeks I've been working on a large job for the Missoula Art Museum (MAM). This is a Big Deal for me, and perhaps my most "prestigious" client so far. While certainly not the Art Institute of Chicago or New York's MOMA, the MAM is quite nice, with one very large gallery, several smaller ones, library and media rooms, and an outstanding curatorial staff that's brought in some spectacular exhibits over the years. In 2017 they added, in cooperation with the City of Missoula, an impressive outdoor art "park" adjacent to the museum.

This job has been in the works for a year, and finally, in May, I received 46 files. The images, made by a Salish Kootenai College photography student, capture and narrate a story of modern Tribal (American Indian) life on and around Montana reservations. Some of the photos are beautiful, some are gritty, one or two are just disturbing. But my job is to make prints, so I'll withhold my opinions and get back to my story.

Part one of the job was to make small proof prints of the entire lot. I used letter-size sheets of Epson luster, in part because it's cheap, and also because luster has a tough, durable surface and would tolerate the handing I expected the prints to receive. They'd be spread out on a large table; the photographer, his teacher, and the museum's senior curator would rearrange, stack, sort, and otherwise cull the lot down to something appropriate to the narration, to fit within the available space for the exhibit, and to stay with their budget for printing and framing.

Everything about the job was routine. There is some time pressure, so I printed over four days. During that time the photographer and his teacher visited here to look at paper choices for the final prints, and I also had some other small client jobs to complete. The printer behaved as I've come to expect: each day's start-up and nozzle-check print revealed some missing nozzles (this aging 7900 is never 100% clean anymore at start-up), some cleaning was done (which, as always, required swapping out some ink cartridges for fuller ones, and usually required multiple channel-pair cleanings as I'd chase missing nozzles around the channels), and then I'd print the day's batch. One small problem: making room for 46 prints! I prefer to let them dry at least 24 hours before stacking them, so I often had a couple of day's prints spread out.

For the picture below, after all were printed, I spread them out on my main studio bench and a couple of temporary tables.

The group met at the college, culled the images, and then called me in to talk about final print sizes. With that sorted, I placed an order for the paper (more on that in another posting), and then did other work while burning off the lead time.

I'll follow-up with another posting or two about making the larger prints.

  --Jay