Back in July, while we were commuting to MSU, Steve Andre and I had
a flash of inspiration: imagine a couple dozen cars driving around
Ann Arbor, and other places, with bumper stickers which read:
www.cyberspace.org
I didn't know a thing about how bumper stickers get made.
But politicians use bumper stickers, so I asked Larry Kestenbaum,
who responded:
>I always thought the best and cheapest place to have bumper stickers made
>was/is Stanley Sawicki & Son in Detroit.
>...
>Their number is 313 962 2725. They said for 500 vinyl stickers (i.e. not
>the cheap paper kind that fades and never comes off), one color on white
>(which could be the background, of course), standard size, would be $175
>plus tax. She didn't mention it, but I think it costs a little more if
>they have to do the design. If you do camera-ready copy, it should be
>very high-rez and as close to full size as possible, because laddering
>will show up in the vinyl.
>...
>
>Good quality is key to having credible looking stickers.
I put this idea on hold until the ISDN connection was ready to go up,
so that folks webbing to Grex should see decent response time.
Here are some questions which need to be resolved:
1) sticker design -- typeface, color, and who's going to prepare the
master? My vision is of white letters on a blue background.
Also, perhaps we should advertise www.grex.org instead?
2) Financing. I am willing to donate $50 to this project, and I'm
willing to front some additional money to be repaid out of the
sale of stickers. Steve suggested that stickers be priced at
$1 each.
I think the publicity impact here is more important than
trying to make some money on the sale of stickers; I imagine that
after the initial burst of sales of maybe 100-150 stickers,
that we would have stock available in the Grex store for the rest
of time.
I'm willing to lead on this, or I can hand it off to the publicity
committee. Whatever makes people happy and motivated sticker-displayers.
165 responses total.
Excellent idea! I'm in for $50 and two or three bumber stickers! (If you handle it, Ken, it's much more liekly to happen. I'm still at a standstill over the full colour t-shirts.
I'll also fund $1 per new 3-month + membership (or a year or more renewal) for a free bumpersticker to be included in membership from the the time the stickers become available for 30 days.
www.grex.org? Don't you mean www.cyberspace.org?
but the bumper sticker should say "www.GREX.cyberpace.org"...after all you cant just advertise the address and not the name! You'd hurt grex's feelings and it might crash a few extra times in protest!
Either will work as I understand it.
Ah. I wasn't aware of that. FWIW, can I get mail at orinoco@grex.org, or just orinoco@cyberspace.org?
Re 4 - www.grex.cyberspace.org will NOT work, unless something has been changed since I was the webmaster.
The question is, should we advertise ourself to the driving public as:
www.cyberspace.org
or
www.grex.org
?
The cyberspace name is an asset...
grex is who we are...
I don't think we have ever really thought about marketing our
web address before.
We absolutely have to advertise www.cyberspace.org. We have the domain. Nobody else does. We'll get many more looks (and many more people remembering it) if it's www.cyberspace.org. It sticks in memories. And since the main point is to get users, this will do it better than anything else.
On the other hand, www.grex.org will print so much larger...
www.cybergrex.org Ha ha ha ha!
Given that two people are willing to front a little more than half the cost of this venture, I think the board should put up the other $75. I think we should most likely use the cybersapce.org domain; we grabbed grex.org more for safekeeping, as I saw it at the time when we forked over money at a board meeting to raise cash for that.
Another reason to use cyberspace is that grex is harder for non-grexers to remember, being neither an english word nor a common one.
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A great idea. I suspect the board would be willing to put some money into this.
I would be happy to do the artwork if Rob is not available. I support this completely and agree that www.cyberspace.org is the best choice.
why cant the bumper sticker say: GREX WWW.Cyberspace.Org or: GREX www.cyberspace.org
Re 6: Yes, you can get mail sent to @grex.org, @cyberspace.org, @grex.cyberspace.org, and several other names which all point to the same machine.
I usually use grex.org because it's easier to type, but www.cyberspace.org would be a lot easier for people who have never heard of us before to remember, so we should probably use that.
I agree. "cyberspace.org" is a neat sounding domain, and its really the one we are, I think. I see grex.org as more of a technical kludge to prevent other problems.
I'm not sure about which one I like. www.cyberspace.org is more appropriate, but which one are you more likely to be able to read from a distance?
Which one are you more likely to be able to *remember* at a distance, Scott?
I don't normally do bumperstickers, so I don't know if I'd put this on my car (how many people here would, I wonder), but I think it's a neat idea nonetheless. I prefer www.cyberspace.org. Regardless whether it's "cyberspace" or "grex", maybe the "ORG" part ought to emphasized somehow, so that people will be less like to remember it as "COM". Both "www.grex.com" and "www.cyberspace.com" get you to places, but those places aren't us.
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www.cyberspace.org
IS NOT LOCKED
(Here the "IS NOT LOCKED" is in caps but in a smaller font than the URL,
so the letters are the same height as the lower case letters of the URL.)
This is inspired by the old "The Green Bike is Not Locked" signs. I think
it is just a bit more intriguing than a bare URL. Or to be a little more
obvious:
GREX IS FREE
www.cyberspace.org
how about...
What IS the breakfast food of champions?
WWW.Cyberspace.org
on half of them and, on the other half...
What is the midnight snack of champions?
WWW.Cyberspace.org
I like both the midnight snack idea, and maybe even more the Grex is free sticker.
As long as we're not the "Last Meal of Champs."
(The Green Bike is not Locked?)
I think any appeal to grex being "free" is too strong an appeal to people's selfish interests. Perhaps something could be done with being among friends on grex.
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It seems like the is a broad consensus for www.cyberspace.org. Valerie, I am not going to put the logo on the bumper sticker. It's not real clear from a distance what it is; color printing just seems to add a whole nother can of worms to projects, such as last year's T-shirts. And, it messes up the symmetry of my design. The logo would make a fine window decal, though, and that might be something T.S. could produce in small quantities.
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I guess I'd prefer www.grex.org rather than www.cyberspace.org because www.cyberspace.org looks like some kind of ad for cyberspace itself, rather than a particular group. People might think www.cyberspace.org is some kind of a joke. But either way it's a wonderful idea!
Anyone who thinks www.cyberspace.org is a joke is probably inclined to test that idea.
Yeah, I like the simple approach: "www.cyberspace.org", in one color, and that's it. It'll be stunning, Ken.
I think www. cyberspace.org is more likely to result in people checking us out. If you are driving and trying to remember the address until you get to your destination, "grex" has a much higher likelyhood of being misremembered. (or forgotten entirely).
cyberspace.org
Everyone Welcome
I like www.cyberspace.org, with nothing else. I'd put it on my car. As a matter of fact, I will.
Just to weigh in, I agree that www.cyberspace.org is far, far more likely to be remembered. Yeah, some may think it's a joke, but as Steve says, they'll probably test their theory. Grex.org is more of an "insiders" thing. Only if you know what grex is will you remember it.
I like the idea of 'everyone welcome', actually, but it does take away from the simplicity again.
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www.cybercommunity.org (Says it all)
(However...)
Do you Grex? WWW.Cyberspace.org What is a Grex? WWW.cyberspace.org Come Grex with us! www.cyberspace.org
This is a bit irrelevant, but I remember my uncle, a mathematician, who has a T-shirt that says "The Joy of Sets". What about "The Joy of Grex"?
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I've long thought the "Cyberspace Communications" thing was a mistake
because it isn't distinctive. "Cyberspace" could mean anyone, and a whole
lot of individuals and groups do use it. ("whois cyberspace" returned
*180* lines, and 34 of those were "Cyberspace Communications". All but
this one were .COM instead of .ORG sites.
It's cliche-ish name, and is worse because it was a cliche before Grex
started using it. Grex is a distinctive name for a distinctive
organization. It deserves to be promoted. If you're on Grex, you're
here, and there's no mistake about it. If you're on/in "cyberspace",
you're probably using a computer and maybe even have something to do with
the Internet (though that isn't guaranteed).
I urge the use of www.grex.org for the bumper stickers, and for Grex in
general.
I think Grex should eventually phase out "cyberspace.org" and basically advertise itself as what it is, www.grex.org. This is grex. There are too many places out there called "Cyberspace" this and that, like the cyberspace.com that is an ISP out in Seattle. Its a cool name but Grex is Grex's name and that is just as cool. And less confusing. It is much easier for users coming here to remember tha t grexis www.grex.org than it is to remember that grex is actually www.cyberspace.org
I disagree. I've liked cyberspace.org from the beginning because it's easy to remember, and I still do. I say if it isn't broken, don't fix it.
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Same here.
Personally, I say two lines. cyberspace.org (much mroe catchy) and something with the word gre in it, (grex) liks "come grex with us" or whatnot
Two-line bumper stickers are much more difficult to read than one line.
cyberspace.org = grex
I'm likely to put either on my car, which is aged and impossible to damage with bumper stickers. I don't mind paying a buck for a bumper sticker. However, there seems to be enough funding to pay for the bumper stickers already. The emphasis has been said not to be income, but publicity. Why not give them away? 500 bumper stickers on people's cars will generate more publicity than 150 on cars and 350 in a box somewhere.
There is $100 of pledged funds (from krj & mta); the information we have today is that the cost will be $175 -- + tax, I assume. If the board wants to buy 490 bumper stickers for the $75 + tax cost, that's fine with me and the board can distribute the stickers as it thinks best. (I'm peeling 5 stickers off the top for each of the project underwriters.) Our laser printer kicked the bucket; who's got the stuff needed to produce "camera-ready" copy? I'll prepare a draft sticker in MS Word.
how bout half of the bumper stickers with
Because they don't price them that way, Richard.
what about grex.cyberspace.org doesn't that work?
We've got rights to one of the most distinctive domains on the internet. I don't think we should drop it for anything
No one has disagreed with that, senna. The disagreement is which name is more distinctive. My point is partly that I think most people seeing the bumper sticker with "www.cyberspace.org" are going to remember "cyberspace" but use ".com" instead of ".org". It turns out not to be a valid point, since there is also, to my surprise, a "www.grex.com" out there. <sigh>
Yes, the existence of grex.com was what prompted the board to snap up grex.org in the first place. I think jep is right about people misremebering the .org part, unfortunately. There are so many .com sites that a lot of people assume *everything* is .com these days. So, even though it's not very aesthetic, maybe the .org part of our address should be in all caps (.ORG, I mean). It's ugly, I know.
I agree. (In fact, I suggested it back in response #23.)
Right. I didn't mean to imply it was my idea. :)
www.cyberspace.org is better than grex.cyberspace.org because (1) it clues them on what to do with this (put it in a browser) and (2) it is easier to remember. I'll vote for the board putting up the rest of the money, and the stickers being given away to anyone who makes a donation of at least a dollar to Grex, shows up at any Grex event (walk/board meeting/gno/etc), buys or donates an auction item, or makes any purchase from the Grex store. In other words, anyone who does anything to make it either easy or worth our while to deliver the sticker to him or her. I'd think of this as a promotional item more than a fund raising item.
I would also offer to sell them (eg give a dollar get a bumper sticker)
Upon reflection, I am leaning towards putting the monochrome version
of Rob Argy's Grex logo on the left of the design. Anyone who wants
only the URL can just cut the logo off. :) So it would look
something like this:
[ Logo ] www.cyberspace.org
Of course the visual elements would be nicely balanced, which is
impossible in this ascii representation.
I know Valerie and others would like color; I *really* do not want to
mess with preparing color camera-ready copy, or color printing.
I'll vote for funding for a bumper sticker.
I will too.
Take a look at the file I just built. It is a grayscale gif file. I will print it out in black and white from a higher resolution version to get camera ready copy. The sticker itself will be printed in blue ink on white, so imagine that the black is blue. http://www.wwnet.net/~srw/bumpersticker.gif First let's agree on the design concepts. I basically followed the design ideas posted here, but I had to deal with some issues. (1) You wanted it with light letters on a dark background, but the logo is designed to appear on a white background. Putting the logo on a dark background looks awful. I don't have a version of the logo that is antialiased against a black background instead of white. I might be able to do that, but it's a lot of work. . So I put the logo on a white background on the left, taking up about 30% of the width, and put the www.cyberspace.org in reversed out letters on a dark background on the right 70%. Between the dark and light fields I have currently put a short gradient. It could easily be replaced with a sharp line. I like the division of the sticker into light and dark fields, but I don't know what you all think of it. I also added a swoosh line under the "org" to draw attention to it. It could be removed if desired. Frankly, I surprised myself. I think it looks pretty good. What do you think? If we can decide these by consensus quickly, I can get it printed out for Ken.
It looks *great*. I think I'd take off the swoosh, but it looks really really good.
I think it looks terrific. I didn't like the swoosh, either. I think it looks like a mistake. But the intent is good. It'd be good to have something that emphasizes the "org" in the URL.
I kind of like the swoosh, certainly more than putting ".ORG" in caps. Looks like I need to call the bumper sticker makers to get our size specifications. Thanks, Steve!
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(Steve, it looks like you may have taken the logo from a color source instead of the B&W source; in the B&W copy I have, the pillars of the building are all the same tone. ??? I should mention that I am viewing on an old B&W Sun monitor.) Could the swoosh have a bit more of an "arch" to it? (Maybe we can pretend we are a part of the UMich Athletic Department and get some funding from Nike!! :) :) )
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In coop8, item #143, Rob Argy had the gifs in ~ajax/dir-gifs. I think grxlogo1.gif is the black & white one. That directory appears to be no longer permitted; you might ask Rob about that, or else I can upload the copy I have from last year.
That's marvelous, Steve! I kind of like the swoosh -- though I agree that it could look unintentional. Maybe it would look a bit more intentional if it were stronger or more arched, or, as Ken requested, more arched. Anyway, that's GREAT!
(Or perhaps even more arched?) Sounds very neat. Being automotively disinclined myself, I'll have to content myself with trying to sell them to my more fortunate friends.
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Thanks for all your support on this, everyone. Valerie, YEAH I WOULD LIKE A COPY of the high-res version. thanks. I did get this logo from a color version. I wasn't aware that Rob had done a separate monochrome version. It might look better, so although I am fairly happy with this one's different grays. I'd like to see a monochrome one. I agree that the swoosh I did was less than artistic. I did it too quickly. There seems to be support for the idea, so I did it again, with a larger brush and more arching as you have suggested. It is definitely better, but there is still the question of whether it is better off without it. You folks decide. http://www.wwnet.net/~srw/bumpersticker2.gif
I like it too, but I'm concerned that the font is going to be a bit small to
be easily readable by non-tailgaters. One thing that might make it a bit
easier to read is to put a bit more space around the dots. As usual, this
is hard to show in ascii, since I'm talking about fractional spaces, not full
spaces, but I'm looking for something about halfway between:
www.cyberspace.org
and
www . cyberspace . org
I think having a bit more space between the components may make it eaiser to
recognize the three familiar words that make it up.
I can easily change the spacing as you suggest. I just did that, and did some manual kerning, too. It is now at http://www.wwnet.net/~srw/bumpersticker3.gif What do you think?
My own preference is still for the basic, cryptic, www.cyberspace.org with no logo, no swoosh, no other text. I do agree with Ken, though, that more space around the dots looks better. I don't agree that it's necessary to stress the .org, and I really don't like the idea of capitalizing it. If you gotta have a swoosh, yes arch it. And wouldn't it be possible to do a swoosh that looks like a brushstroke, with jagged but definite edges, rather than one that looks like spray paint? Something along the lines of Japanese calligraphy. My first choice is no-swoosh, second choice would be a brushstroke swoosh. The spray painted swoosh just looks bad. I don't mean to deinigrate srw's fine work on the graphics here, though. Thanks for turning these ideas into reality that we can argue about! Another note: the price per sticker falls rapidly with increased quantity. A thousand stickers would cost much less than twice $175. Also, once they've printed up one order of stickers, additional orders of identical stickers involve less set-up and hence are cheaper (though not as cheap as getting the additional stickers with the original order). I have been in politics for 27 years, and I have yet to hear anyone complain about Sawicki for price or service or quality. Don't let them design something for you, though.
Er, sorry, that was Jan who suggested more space around the dots.
I like the spacing around the dots in bumpersticker3.gif. I like the Grex logo, except that I'm afraid it'll be too small compared to the rest of the bumper sticker. Larry hit it on the head, that the swoosh looks like spraypaint. I can't visualize one that would look better, but designing things is a distinct weakness of mine. Great job!
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I agree with Larry that a more "brushstroke" looking swoosh might be better, and the extra space Jan suggested really does improve readability. (I never would have thought of that!) I prefer the shades of grey of the current logo, fwiw.
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Here's a task for one or more people to do: download Steve's current design, cut it out, and rubber-cement it lightly to a car bumper. Let us know how the prototype looks from a bit of a distance.
Returning to an earlier discussion, what abou the idea of a rock-painting expedition? I'd be glad to help out with that sort of thing... (Oh, and my pet turtle is small enough to be non-existant, but I'll plaster everything else with it)
I've got a few cans of strangely colored paint from the previous owner of my house...
I can contribute some red spray paint that resides in our basement, and possibly a few cans of boring house paint.
Thanks for the logo URL valerie. I haven't downloaded it yet. Larry, I appreciate your comments on the swoosh. I agree that a brushstroke would look better, but I don't have one handy. I am not convinced that we need anything to emphasize the org either. I figured it was worth a try to get reactions. The spray paint was easy to do. Reactions are decidedly mixed. I'm inclined to drop the swoosh altogether unless someone can supply a brushstroke, in which case I am willing to post a 4th attempt. Even though it is a bit small, I am strongly inclined to keep the logo. It's a distinctive graphic element. A "service mark" (albeit unregistered).
I also think the logo serves an emotional purpose for the owner/displayer, which is what brought me around to wanting to include it on the sticker. But I suspect that the logo on the sticker should be derived from a copy which does not have the 3-D shadow effects on the "town hall" elements, and on the GREX letters. Those shadow effects seem to get really funky when the logo is scaled down, and when the image is converted to B&W -- which is essential for low-cost printing -- the shadow effects just become fuzz and grunge.
I uploaded a copy of the B&W logo which I have to: ~krj/logo/grxlogo1.gif
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I'll take a look at it as soon as I can, and see if I can come up with something we can all be happy with.
FWIW, I think it would be better without thw swoosh, but I like the logo. I'll use it either way, but I agree with Ken about the emotional purpose of the logo for me, at least.
I've put Ken's B&W logo on my UM webpage, if people want to look at it. http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~dang/grxlogo1.gif I think I like to normal one better, even on the bumper sticker size.
Re: the swoosh, it's OK by me. But I'd prefer it to be either straight or at least symmetrical. What's there now looks too much like a scribble...
If you're taking votes, I'd votes for just plain old
www.cyberspace.org
in a big sans-serif font. As big as will fit on a standard-size
bumper sticker. The reason for this is that making it as big as
possible
will make it easier to read and more memorable because of it. imho, the
logo is superfluous to the message.
Right, but we also have an emotional desire of Grexers to put the logo image on their car, to say "look, I'm a grexer!" I include myself in this too. (I think I said this already.) So we give up a little size on the URL, but in exchange we make the sticker more appealing to Grexers, so that the sticker will be attached to more cars. Has *anyone* downloaded the prototype and stuck it on their bumper, and looked at it from 50-100 feet away?
I too think just the URL, no logo, would look the best and get the most attention. But I don't use or display bumper stickers so maybe I should abstain.
I don't like the B&W logo very much. I really do like having some version of the logo on the bemper sticker, though. I also like the split black/white background, even though it was my idea. :-) I haven't tried printing it out on paper and looking at it from a few car lengths away. It doesn't seem like it would be hard to read, though.
I'd do it, but ink is expensive. :) I'll do it next time I'm in a lab.
To tell the truth, I don't like any version of the logo I've seen all that much. So, I'm more in favor of just the straight URL, but I'm also a bit biased.
How are you biased, orinoco? By not liking the logo, or in some way that influences your reaction to the logo? FWIW, I like the greyscale version of the colour logo, I love the two tone look, and I *really* look forward to getting these made up.
As I mentioned once before: folks who dislike the logo can cut it off. :)
Is there a general consensus that the design process is about done? My thought about the greyscale version of the color logo: The building elements look nice, but the "G R E X" letters tend to look blurry and indistinct. How hard would it be to take the greyscale building and put some nice, solid, impactful, flat "G R E X" letters in there? (Besides the bumper sticker, this would also impact my flyer and bookmark projects; the greyscale & shadowed letters tend to turn to mush as they get smaller.)
After our TV show, the fellow who had been cueing misti said he was a student at Huron High, and that they could do things like bumper sticker and t-shirts and business cards at a low price.
Interesting. Back when I did time there, the graphic arts teacher was truly fantastic, and lead the students there to doing an excellent job at the things they did. That might be worthwhile to invastigate. Maybe not for this job, but if this run of stickers proves worthwhile, then we might do it again?
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I caught the 3:00 p.m. performance. You guys were great!
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Valerie, can I come over for a viewing? Larry watched, but didn't tape. He didn't think of it.
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OK, let me know when. Thanks!
Valerie suggested I take a look at this item, as I made the original logo. I took a few minutes to deshadow/decolor a version of the 3D logo. It retains some depth, but taking away the gray shadow against the white background improves the clarity. As Ken said, the shadow blurs the text when printed in a small size or in one color. I also did a version in black and white, as opposed to using shades of gray. Depending on the printing technique used, you may not be able to do very good grays, in which case the "swoosh" as currently envisioned, and the white-to-black fade, may not look good either. Check out http://www.apin.com/grex/sticker.html to how they look in modified versions of srw's gif image. For a large GIF of the grayscale, get http://www.apin.com/grexgray.gif, or for the black & white version, get http;//www.apin.com/grexblac.gif. I'd suggest doing the final design in a higher resolution than the current GIFs. By the way, I have no opinion on whether or not to include the logo. One of the more memorable billboards I've seen was simply "www.yh.com" in big letters - the more mystery, the better! On the other hand, the "if you don't like it, lop it off" argument is quite compelling, allowing the sticker placer to choose.
Rob, thanks! You might want to correct those URL's, there is a "grex" directory missing from the greyscale and the B&W. I'm looking forward to working with these B&W logos.
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Of the three in the bumper.html page, I like the middle one the best. I appreciate the improvement in deshadowing the logo text. I just didn't have time for that. Thanks Rob. I like Rob's swoosh better than mine, too. I would be perfectly happy without a swoosh. I only did the first swoosh to give people food for thought. It is OK, but not essential, IMO. If we do go with it, Rob's is clearly better. I don't like the reversed logo in the third image. I picked the most effective font that I had, but I don't have a great collection. Feel free to try another font. I won't mind. I agree that a higher res version should be printed out for the camera-ready copy.
I agree Rob's swoosh is better; I'm willing to leave the .org swoosh off, I'm not powerfully committed either way. I agree with srw that the middle sticker (bumper4) is the way to go. Folks with great font libraries, feel free to play with the www.cyberspace.org text. I'm thinking in terms of trying to take our master copy to Stanley Sawicki in Detroit in about a week..
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I think it would be very cool if someone else (perhaps Rob) would print out camera ready copy for krj. I have no more time to spend on it. However, if no one can do it, I will print out what I have when it is needed. At this point I'm figuring we'll drop the swoosh, unless there are a lot of complaints.
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I need to call Sawicki and get the exact dimensions for the sticker.
the "nice" paper needs to be bright white for best copying.
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I called Sawicki. The standard bumper dimensions are 3.75" x 14.5". Turnaround is 5-7 days. I note that this will not fit on Valerie's 8.5 x 11 piece of paper (response #128).
A digression, back to the logos. I played with the Very Large Black and Grayscale Logos today, and I put together a first draft of the long- promised music conference flyer. Both logos have problems in B&W flyers. In the Greyscale logo, the "G R E X" letters are the dimmest elements in the display; as I shrink the logo down to a useable size, about 1/8 of the gif on the web page, they pretty much vanish. (I'm doing my shrinking in .jpg form, as we discussed earlier.) The all Black & White version of the logo shrinks nicely, but because there is no shading distinction between the building pillars and the "G R E X" letters, the name of our organization looks kind of like " G I R I E I X ". My proposal is that somebody more skilled than me in graphics come up with a version using grayscale building elements, but a solid black "G R E X" lettering. If this new version could be made available on the web in smaller sizes suitable for flyers and bookmarks, that would be a help to me too. Thanks for your consideration... in the meantime I am going to have a few flyers made from my draft, as soon as I figure out how to get Word 97 to de-clickify something. (Can you believe it? Word 97 is "clickifying" http://www.cyberspace.org ON MY FLYER. ON MY HARDCOPY PRINT. I suppose that in windows 98 one will be able to put the mouse right on the sheet of paper and click on the link.)
<g>
(Indeed. Word 97 makes all kinds of uncalled-for assumptions about what I want, and seems to think it is smarter than I am.)
Re #137: Well, you'd have to make sure the paper is compliant with the PC 97/98 specification, or Windows 98 won't run on it, I think...
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Not having Word 97, I can't be sure about this, but there SHOULD be an option to turn off those unwanted features, probably somewhere near where one would turn off "Smart Quotes", and other error-catching features (like capitalize days of the week, uncapitalize the second letter of a word (e.g., THe), fix standard spelling errors (like teh)).
Yup! I forget precisely what it was called, but I found the auto-correct features pretty directly with the aid of the built-in help function. The product ships with just about every auto-correct feature turned on.
Which is why the first thing I do with an MS Office product is go and shut off all the autocorrect features. :)`
Some of the autocorrect features, like changing teh to the, are quite useful. Of course, I couldn't have written this response with them turned on.
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Thanks, Valerie! I'll try to incorporate one or more of these in my next flyer print run. Did you try any of them in the bumper sticker? To get the bumper sticker unstuck: what sort of 8x14 paper should I go buy and deliver to you, for printing of the master?
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Well, I don't know where you get 14.5 inch paper. Another idea I had was to split the bumper sticker in the black space just to the right of the white/black fade, and print it in two pieces.
Maybe Kinko's could help you out.
first of all, the bumper sticker physical dimensions are not hte dimensions *abailable* for printing .. there are margins and stuff , ok. second, if the RATIO of the print is kept at the ratio of the physical dimensions of hte bumper sticker, then the printer *ought* to be able to scale things correctly. thirdly, even if you print on 11 inch paper, - at FULL scale - (and let the print bleed off the end of hte paper), print it twice: so that each print, wen cut-n-pasted (physically at the printer's) will assemble into a full sized master. oh, when you print the original twice .. flip the 2nd print 180 degrees so the *other* end gets bled off the paper <g>.
Is everyone aware that GREX.ORG doesn't get to our web page? can we fix that?
grex.org works for me. I've got one of the authorative name servers for it, so that might not be a good test, but all the other name servers have the same information. Is it still not working for you? What do you get instead?
When I tried yesterday I got "File not found" I will try again with a different browser.
OK, MSIE found Grex.org just fine today. I've had some problems with Netscape finding pages before, so maybe that's what happened yesterday.
Hmm. Netscape 3.01 on my Mac found grex.org with no problem.
Re #145: If you really want to print at 1:1 scale, and it *is* 14.5", then get a little bit of 11x17 paper (the size of two 8.5x11 pages side-by-side, it is used often for newsletters). Of course, as TS said, the printer ought to be able to scale it if we can't get exactly the right size.
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No problem. Sometimes in the heat of discussion, obvious solutions get overlooked. I was just afraid no one had suggested it b/c there was some good reason not to use it.
(or you could attach two sheets of normal paper together...)
The board minutes indicated that there was curiousity about what has happened to this idea. Right now what is needed is for someone (possibly Valerie) to print out a high-resolution master of the last version of the design, and then someone (possibly me) to make two trips to Stanley Sawicki's in Detroit -- one to drop off the master, and one to pick up the finished stickers. I've let this slide in part because I've been discouraged by the total lack of response to my two previous publicity initiatives, and in part because Winter is a lousy season for bumper stickers. But now that Spring is here I can probably be prodded into stirring from hibernation.
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Sorry not to have read the previous 157 responses, but will you also offer a bike-sized bumper sticker?
I doubt very much that there will be a bike-size sticker: it costs $175 for the one design in one size. Probably we will suggest that you take a pair of scissors to the auto-size sticker and hack away as best you can. I realize that's not a very environmentally-friendly answer.
We have tried the conversion process, and there is generally not enough left to read. Actually, you could not read a bike sticker too well anyway. I suppose if we really wanted to do some good advertising a trailer would work better. I presume this is mainly a fund-raiser.
No, it's three parts advertising and one part ego-massage for the Grexer displaying this sticker on the motor vehicle.
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Yup -- now that I work downtown I sometimes watch all the people walking by with this creeping sense that there are Grexers "right there", but of course I'll never know for sure. <grin> The T's help, and the bumperstickers will also help. (They don't end up in the laundry....)
I've looked at my May schedule. I admit defeat: further work on this is tabled until June. *sigh*
You have several choices: