Two printmakers working at long finishing benches in the YI2C workshop

BEHIND THE PRINT · SINCE 2006

The workshop isn’t always picture-perfect. The finished work has to be.

For nearly 20 years, this is where photographs have been printed, stretched, checked and packed by real people. These are the bits customers normally never see.

Come inside

HOW IT BEGAN

We thought we might make a little bit of extra money.

YI2C began in December 2006 when my brother Wesley and I sold what we could, bought a second-hand large-format printer and started working from his flat. He built the first website. We cut timber at our parents’ house, drove it back and forth and learned almost everything by doing it.

We had seen printed wallpaper and thought it looked brilliant. It was just insanely expensive. We realised the same technology could put people’s own photographs onto canvas for a sensible price, at a time when hardly anybody was doing it.

For the first six months, the printer was in a flat and the timber was being cut at my parents’ house. We moved into a small unit, then into the larger unit next door. The room changed. The basic job did not: make the next photograph look as good as it possibly can.

THE PHOTOGRAPHS BEGIN LATER

We weren’t taking photographs. We were trying to get the orders made.

The earliest years are not neatly documented. We started photographing the workshop more regularly when we began sharing bits of the day on Facebook. So the pictures begin later. The work didn’t.

An earlier large-format printer producing rows of canvas artwork
One of the earlier printers in use
Shelves densely stacked with timber for canvas stretcher frames
Timber cut and ready to become frames
Large finished photographic display panels standing inside the workshop
Photographing finished work inside the workshop

BEHIND THE PHOTOGRAPH

What you saw. What was just outside the frame.

Some of our cleanest website photographs were taken in the middle of a working print room. Move a table, clear one corner, hold the print straight and keep everything else just outside the crop. The finished photograph looked calm. Behind the camera usually wasn’t.

Complete workshop setup with two people arranging a framed family print, plant and wood-effect paper backdrop
The finished photograph looked calm. Just outside the crop, a real team was making it happen.

FROM UPLOAD TO THE BOX

Most orders follow the same route through the room.

These photographs were taken on different days, but they show the normal sequence. Every photograph is still looked at by a person. Every canvas is still stretched and checked by hand.

  1. A printmaker comparing photographic prints beside a large-format printer
    01

    Assess and size

    A person checks the photograph, considers the crop and prepares the requested dimensions.

  2. Large-format printer producing a sheet of photographic prints
    02

    Print

    The image is printed onto quality canvas using genuine Epson inks.

  3. Solid pine stretcher bars stacked on workshop shelving
    03

    Prepare the frame

    Solid pine stretcher bars form the structure beneath the finished canvas.

  4. A printmaker stretching and stapling a photographic canvas by hand
    04

    Stretch by hand

    The canvas is tensioned around the frame and the edges are finished at the bench.

  5. Close view of hands finishing a canvas neatly around a frame corner
    05

    Check the finish

    We look for marks, alignment problems, surface faults and corners that need another pull.

  6. A finished photographic canvas being wrapped for dispatch
    06

    Pack

    Only when the print is ready is it protected, boxed and prepared to leave the workshop.

See why our canvas quality feels different

WHEN EVERY SURFACE IS FULL

Those first Christmases were chaos.

From November through December we worked 18-hour days, went home to eat and sleep, then came back and started again. For every order that left, it felt as though three more arrived. The photographs are untidy because the room was untidy. Every surface had become part of production.

Workshop bench surrounded by tall stacks of completed canvas prints
Christmas production filling every available bench
Tall stacks of finished canvas orders ready to leave the workshop
A long table covered with freshly printed artwork awaiting checks
A printmaker working behind a table filled with finished canvases
Two towers of small completed canvas prints on a workshop table

THE ORDERS THAT CHANGE THE ROOM

Some prints need two people just to turn them round.

Custom dimensions, long panoramas and unusually large work all change how we use the benches. We have also completed a commission of around 400 canvases, each prepared consistently before being handed to an individual artist. Whatever the scale, it still arrives in the room as one print that has to be made properly.

Production support for artists and businesses
A person standing beside an exceptionally wide panoramic canvas
A custom panoramic order being checked
Two people checking a wide mountain panorama on a workshop bench
Two people presenting a very wide framed landscape print
A person holding a tall monochrome tree canvas in the workshop
Wide view across the organised YI2C workshop and its production benches
The same room on a quieter day

WHAT NEARLY 20 YEARS TEACHES YOU

The difference is in the things customers can’t feel through a screen.

It has never been effortless. Printers have broken, websites have failed and some months have been incredibly difficult. We have watched cheaper, machine-made prints flood the market while trying to explain a difference customers cannot feel online. But we are still here, still making the prints properly and still proud when one leaves the workshop.

  • A person considers the crop and checks the image before production.
  • Custom sizes are handled individually rather than forced into a preset.
  • Genuine Epson ink and solid pine sit beneath the finished surface.
  • Canvas is tensioned and finished by hand.
  • Marks, alignment and corners are checked before packing.
  • We do not knowingly dispatch work that is not good enough.

THE FINISHED PRINT

We have made hundreds of thousands of prints. Every one still turns up as somebody’s photograph.

We are still a small team, and we would never say no to more orders. The one thing we have never compromised on is quality. If we would not be proud to send it, it does not leave.

A finished photographic print being checked in the workshop
Two printmakers finishing canvases at neighbouring benches
A printmaker carrying a large waterfall canvas across a finishing bench

YOUR PHOTOGRAPH, NEXT

Bring us the picture. We’ll take it from there.

Create your canvas