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THE MELBOURNE MAP BLACK & WHITE PRINT – A frantic December.

For those of you who don’t know the history of The Melbourne Map project, back in the 80’s, we created and distributed the first Melbourne Map from a garage at the back of my mum’s house.

For this most recent edition of The Melbourne Map our studio has been a shared space at the fantastic Boom Makers factory.

Unfortunately we are limited with space there so I have once again taken over mum’s garage.   A different location to the first garage but enough space (after a big clear and clean) to house “operations”.

Mum, at age 83 is still a keen gardener so we have a beautiful outlook from the shed.

 

Here’s a short summary of our December

In my previous blog I reported that the black & white prints had successfully been printed at PMS Lithography.  Over the following few days the ink needed to dry then the prints could be trimmed and packed onto a pallet ready for delivery.

3rd December  – Delivery Day – we co-ordinated couriers and a ‘mate with a forklift’ to remove the pallet of maps off the truck, and some rather large tubes for the limited edition prints.

The forklift was a bees whisker too tall to fit in the garage but Graham was able to nudge the pallet just inside the door and we packed the tubes along our newly assembled shelves.

 

And that is where I spent most of December, sometimes almost melting.  The garage proved to be a bit like a sauna after the temperature gauge passed 30 degrees.

The technique and elements required for packing the prints were trialed and perfected.  We were keen to ensure they arrived with their new owners in pristine condition.

We learnt the intricacies of the Australia Post website, making sure each and every one of our customer’s details were uploaded accurately.
I have to say if it were not for my daughter arriving back in town and offering to step in and help I may well have had a nervous breakdown.  Thank goodness for millennials!

Together Sam and I did many 12-18 hour days to ensure that we could deliver all the posters before Christmas.  Australia Post did a sterling job 99% of the time.

There were a few prints that arrived a bit battered and bruised but we happily replaced all of these.  If you had any issues with the delivery of your print – please contact us.
 
As we rolled and packed the posters the Limited Editions were being printed by Creffield Digital Printing. I have to say that Creffield were the most amazing company to deal with and also worked incredibly hard to print and deliver on time.

I couldn’t be happier with the quality and look of our Limited Editions, they are just superb.  Printed on the finest quality archival stock, each map takes 27 minutes to print.  They are then packaged between sheets of acid free tissue paper and carefully installed into super thick tubes for delivery.    Our ¾ Limited Edition size were express delivered by Australia Post however the larger, same-size-as-original prints exceed the post office size limits.

At this time in December I was not going to entrust these precious prints to any courier company. After a marathon packing session Sami and I loaded the car and drove over 350 kilometres hand delivering the maps all around Melbourne. It was so lovely to meet the new owners and thank them personally for their support.  I can’t wait to see the photos of their prints once framed and hanging.

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