@Archonix
Basically, serendipity happened and everyone got something nice out of it.
The show was still in development and needed those big backlit displays and fake computer screens and windows showing scenic views of the interior of the station for the sets - but their budget was, like, Doctor Who money. And the place I was working at needed to print thousands of feet of “something” to test new printers we were trying to create, for a market that didn’t exist, and we didn’t have a budget for test files or any real-world examples of how people might use what we were trying to make.
We had helped with some other sets for shows just because we had tons of toys and no adult supervision, and we were trying to figure out how to make large format printers do more than print blueprints and charts - the stuff that eventually became the “DisplayMakers” at Kinkos and other print shops. This is back when printers were still, like, $20,000 each and a “big” computer for graphics design had 24 megs of memory.
So, we had rooms full of wide format inkjet printers that were little more than CAD printer chassis with some “gee, I hope we get this working” hardware and software duct tapped to them, and a warehouse full of “can we print on this?” plastic ranging from tyvek to high quality canvas and sheets of polycarbonate, and just about everything in between - but we had to figure out how to get print heads to work for days instead of hours, and only put down enough ink to make a color show on plastic, and also be able to dry on it, without melting the media we were printing on, and get color matching and dry times figured out, and all of that.
Somehow someone working on the set designs for B5 knew someone who we’d done weird printing for in the past, like maybe through Disney or Adobe something like that, and they gave us stuff they wanted printed big - like, 10’ wide and 100’ long, and they wanted it on backlit frosted plastic, which we were only just starting to play with. They gave us a bunch of files that turned out to be signage for the station, and the background control panels that actors didn’t interact with, and views of the station that you can see through the windows in offices and hallways.
All that kind of set stuff was super expensive to do back then, like make things look like flat screens, or big displays or that didn’t change. Basically it had to be screen printed or painted by hand.
The files they sent were all really big and complex images in Illustrator or Canvas with lots of gradient fills, and they did a good job of breaking our RIP or screwing up the printers, so we made that what we tested with for, like, months. Anything that successfully dried (read: the media didn’t just melt into a puddle on the floor and the printer or the RIP didn’t catch fire) we would send to the set folks. They would give it a try and let us know how it worked, or if it didn’t, and we’d print some more.
Eventually they were sending us new stuff every week, and we were sending them 100’ rolls of printed output as we figured out how to get the printers to not catch fire or explode. And as the sets aged we got to see how well the media stood up to “normal” wear and tear under bright lights.
We didn’t know what the show was - the rumor was that it was “something French”, and we could see it was something science fiction-y.
Then the show hit the air and we all saw those big backlit displays and literally freaked the fuck out. We had big team viewings of the show and partied until everyone passed out.
Good times.
So - Babylon 5 had a lot to do with why those large format inkjet printers with the “never run out” print heads at print shops happened the way they did :) And it’s why we have plastic that you can print on with soy sauce based inks that look solid when you look at them from one side but you can see through them from the other side, like on store windows.
It’s like the advances we got from the space age, in a future space age. But instead of aluminum and Velcro we got full-window liquor store ads for beer. So …