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Picket Signs

Zinjifar

Silver Meritorious Sponsor
What are good ways to letter picket signs?

The best-looking ones are professionally printed. But taking it down a notch, what are the options for someone with a normal inkjet printer, not one that takes folio-size paper?

Hand-lettered ones using wide felt-tip marker pens usually look a bit scrappy. Stencils look like something from a construction site. Stick-on vinyl letters are too expensive.

The CCHR demo pics posted yesterday showed some well-lettered signs. Anyone know how they were produced?

Paul

At least a couple I saw were done on a home printer; laser or ink jet

You create your sign as a document (or graphic) the size you want, then print it 'tiled' and put it together, pasted or glued, on your signboard.

Zinj
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
Thanks, Zinj. I bought a length of 3/4" pvc pipe today and a few other bits and pieces. Now for some experimentation. :)

Paul
 

Terril park

Sponsor
What are good ways to letter picket signs?

The best-looking ones are professionally printed. But taking it down a notch, what are the options for someone with a normal inkjet printer, not one that takes folio-size paper?

Hand-lettered ones using wide felt-tip marker pens usually look a bit scrappy. Stencils look like something from a construction site. Stick-on vinyl letters are too expensive.

The CCHR demo pics posted yesterday showed some well-lettered signs. Anyone know how they were produced?

Paul

Clearly a gap in the " Robot Auditor" portfolio.

Art students are well able to do this well. I suggest forming a liason.

My days of pulling art students are long gone.
Really miss the cute chicks. :(

Most anon will do better.

However, I did an ecologic hybrid version. I
used electrical tape, double spaced, to make most letters. Round ones, like O, I did with marker pens.

The carbon footprint is miniscule!

They can be briefly glimpsed in london videos, and especially photos.

As they are now broadly in the public domain I
can no longer sue for copyright.

" google
TECH outside COS"

" google
FREEZONE TECH"

Humbly tendered as a gift to mankind. ESMB
members are first in the queue.
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
Here's an idea I hadn't thought of (from a postcard for sale on ebay):

sandwichboardman.jpg


Paul
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
I had been thinking how to advertise my own stuff at the March 15 protest, and not feeling too good about it as it's a bit off-purpose. But I so wanted to wave a sign around promoting my brand as an alternative.

Then I realized that I could maybe walk around with my own sign by myself anyway. Hah! I couldn't find out online if it was legal or not--some question over it in Oxford Street, London, anyway. So I telephoned the local City Centre Manager and discussed it with him and he said it's fine as long as I don't cause an obstruction or distribute free literature (which needs a license). Green light!

Yesterday I spent HOURS putting together the support for my A2 (about 2' x 1 1/2') foam-board sign, using a 22mm PVC pipe. I designed the lettering to produce an image of the right size, and printed out the image onto four sheets of normal A4 paper (A4 x 2 = A3 size; A3 x 2 = A2 size) with a normak inkjet printer, then Scotch-taped them together and slipped them into the plastic cover. With care to line up any letters cut in half, it looks great. You can't easily see the joins. Today I headed off to Newcastle City Centre, sign in hand.

I was there for three hours, from 11:30 to 2:30pm. I stayed in the main pedestrian area, no vehicle traffic at all except for a few utility vehicles. The volume of foot traffic past a fixed point averaged about a hundred people a minute (6,000 an hour). I sat down about 20% of the time and walked around for the rest of it. I kept the sign above my head for almost all of that time. Most of the time I was in Northumberland Street. I read online that rents for the shops in that street are second in England only to London's Oxford Street. Prime real estate.

The 22mm pole is too flimsy for North-East winds--it gets very windy up here, even in the middle of town. It would work OK in LA most of the time. Otherwise, my design for a good-looking waterproof reusable sign seemed to work well. I bought some 32mm PVC pipe today, which is definitely rigid enough. I will have the Mark 2 sign ready for Saturday, which is much busier than a weekday. :)

I'll provide photos when I have some.

Paul
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
I was there for three hours, from 11:30 to 2:30pm. I stayed in the main pedestrian area, no vehicle traffic at all except for a few utility vehicles. The volume of foot traffic past a fixed point averaged about a hundred people a minute (6,000 an hour).

My signs had yawnguy.com on them. My idea was that anyone interested would go to that website and then follow one of the links. So I checked my website counter at 11pm today (same day) and the number of people in the North-East who checked it out, drum roll ............. zero.

So goodbye to those signs. See how useful it is to have the sign set-up I have? All I have to do is redesign some signs in Fireworks and print them off on my inkjet, tape them together, and I'm off. I've got something completely different for my next trip out on Saturday. Let's see how this one works....

Next one:
yawnguy07_small.gif


Paul
 

Terril park

Sponsor
. I bought some 32mm PVC pipe today, which is definitely rigid enough. I will have the Mark 2 sign ready for Saturday, which is much busier than a weekday. :)

I'll provide photos when I have some.

Paul

Try 2x1 inch wood. Rigid enough and easier to attach signs to.
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
I spent three hours midday today, Saturday, in town with my latest sign. The main shopping street was only about 10-20% busier than it had been on Thursday. Although there's a bit nearby that was thronged with hundreds of teenage kids who appear at the weekend, presumably being at school during the week.

It was extremely windy, and just before I left it rained quite heavily. My improved sign-holder with the 32mm plastic pipe held up extremely well to the weather, and the signs stayed nice and dry. Despite the wind buffetting sometimes threatening to tear the sign-holder out of my hand, at no time was I concerned that it would fall apart. It currently looks exactly the same as it did when I set out, apart from a small black scuff mark on the base of the pipe from my shoe, which I'll clean off.

I heard several people commenting on it. On three separate occasions, a group of teenage girls stopped me to ask who "Yawnguy" was, and were somewhat impressed to see the character in person. This is obviously the beginning of Yawnguy's spread into common culture along with Superman and Batgirl and the others. See guys, here's a way to get random pretty young girls to approach you on the street: walk around with Yawnguy signs. :)

Do you think that next time I should offer them a free group Rub & Yawn stress-release session? Hmmm. Maybe not.

Paul
 

Zinjifar

Silver Meritorious Sponsor
I spent three hours midday today, Saturday, in town with my latest sign. The main shopping street was only about 10-20% busier than it had been on Thursday. Although there's a bit nearby that was thronged with hundreds of teenage kids who appear at the weekend, presumably being at school during the week.

It was extremely windy, and just before I left it rained quite heavily. My improved sign-holder with the 32mm plastic pipe held up extremely well to the weather, and the signs stayed nice and dry. Despite the wind buffetting sometimes threatening to tear the sign out of my hand, at no time was I concerned that it would fall apart. It currently looks exactly the same as it did when I set out, apart from a small black scuff mark on the base of the pipe from my shoe, which I'll clean off.

I heard several people commenting on it. On three separate occasions, a group of teenage girls stopped me to ask who "Yawnguy" was, and were somewhat impressed to see the character in person. This is obviously the beginning of Yawnguy's spread into common culture along with Superman and Batgirl and the others. See guys, here's a way to get random pretty young girls to approach you on the street: walk around with Yawnguy signs. :)

Do you think that next time I should offer them a free group Rub & Yawn stress-release session? Hmmm. Maybe not.

Paul

Prolly depends on who's the rubber and who's the rubbee :)

So, I take it you went with the single pipe, rather than the 'telescoping' model.

Hmmm, Yawhguy becomes meme.

Zinj
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
So, I take it you went with the single pipe, rather than the 'telescoping' model.

Hmmm, Yawnguy becomes meme.

I first used the single 22mm pipe, fixed to the foamboard with a T-connector, two 5" cross-pieces, and 5 self-tapping screws with washers. This ended up being too flimsy in the wind. So I got some 32mm pipe and put it over the existing pipe, connecting it at the base of the foamboard with three self-tapping screws. So I do have a double-pipe, but not telescoping. I can see no use for the telescope arrangement at all, especially not in the winds we get up here. If I had only used the 32mm pipe I would not need the 22mm pipe inside it, but there again my local Homebase store (similar to Home Depot, but UK-sized) didn't sell 32mm T-adaptors like they did for the 22mm pipe, and I wouldn't trust the sign-holder to stand up to the wind without the cross-pieces.

Photos are of the sign-holder front and back, and the two signs du jour I was walking around town with for three hours today (Sunday). I had mainly blokes approaching me today.

yg08_act_small.jpg
yg09_act_small.jpg
signholder_back_small.jpg
signholder_front_small.jpg


Paul
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
My Internet connection is playing up, so I'm not reading/posting much at present.

Here are the 3/15 protest signs I'll probably use, or something like them. I know there's a lot of words on there. :)

anon02.gif
anon01.gif


Paul
 

Dulloldfart

Squirrel Extraordinaire
I'm still getting out and about with my sign-holder in town and also just down the street from where I live where there is an office complex and lots of vehicle traffic on the Great North Road next to it.

Today's signs were:

yg12_small.gif
yg13_small.gif


I always wanted to walk down the street with a big sign saying "Repent! The End is Nigh!" I couldn't fit in the "Repent!", but now the rest of that mission is accomplished.

The page showing all the signs with a log of their airing is at:
www.yawnguy.com/signs

Paul
 

Terril park

Sponsor
I recently moved house and had an estate agents
for sale sign in the back garden. This is made with a very strong light plastic corrugated material,
double sided with a 2"X2" timber inbetween.

I cut the outer 1" edge of both sides to separate them, as they were glued together with an incredibly
strong glue which resisted cutting through.

I then unscewed them from the 2"X2" handle,
and replaced that with two 2"X1" sticks and screwed them onto those. Thus I now had 2 strong, light weatherproof and sturdy picket signs. I painted 3 coats of white paint, ( quick drying acrylic primer/ undercoat).

I wasn't able to find a supplier of large black
stick on letters, so made them with black electrical
tape using double width, for straight letters, and for round letters used marker pen.
 
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