John’s son Robert, who was Luci Miller’s father, joined Miller Blueprint in 1946 after service in the Army Signal Corps during World War II.

“In his later years, it was my grandfather’s brain dance to re-stock all the topographical maps in precise alphabetical order,” Luci Miller says. Miller stocked topographical maps for the whole state prior to the availability of digital downloads. As the company grew, they expanded into surveying equipment, maps, and even aerial photography (flying their own aerials ended when the government requisitioned their airplane during World War II).

In those days blueprints had to be exposed in sunlight, and the company hung their prints across Austin’s Congress Avenue to accomplish that. John Miller launched the company because he was working for the highway department as a draftsman and saw the need for graphics to be outsourced, his granddaughter says. “I think the Millers have done a wonderful job of listening to their customers and understanding where they want to go,” Coyle says. Art and architecture supplies brought in the crowds back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, he says. “Being customer-centric is a good starting point, and having empowered employees with positive attitudes.”Ĭoyle adds that customers frequently comment that they bought their architecture supplies from Miller while they were at the University of Texas decades ago, or even remember coming in with their parents when they were kids.

“When you look at how a company survives that long, you always have to start with the culture and core values of the family that owns it,” notes Steve Coyle, Miller’s vice president of marketing sales and service and until recently the company’s COO. If a customer from the early days were magically transported to the company’s current lobby, he or she would recognize the same entrepreneurial drive and customer focus as existed back then. That strange coincidence is not the only similarity between the Miller Blue Print of the 1920s and today’s Miller Imaging & Digital Solutions. “It’s interesting that we’re celebrating the 100 th anniversary during this COVID pandemic and they started the company just as the country was getting over the Spanish Flu!” “They started the company in June 1920, when the Spanish Flu had just ended,” says Miller, who owns the company with her brother Bob and nephew Josh.

When John and Louise Miller founded Miller Blue Print in Austin, Texas in 1920, they could have never guessed that their granddaughter, Luci Miller, would be running the company a century later.

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