[free-sklyarov] Picket-Signs-mini-HOWTO

[Alex Fabrikant]

A couple of us got together and made a simple "intro" to making picket
signs based on our experiences from last week. It's reproduced below, and
also posted at:

http://csua.berkeley.edu/~alexf/sklyarov/Picket-Signs-mini-HOWTO

Any corrections/additions are most welcome; send them to
<sign-making at happycool.com>.

Hopefully this'll help people make some cool signs for Monday's events =)

+++

Picket Signs mini-HOWTO
Victor Piterbarg <sign-making at happycool.com>
v0.0.1, 28 Jul 2001

This document provides provides a simple introduction to making effective
picket signs efficiently. The totality of information presented herein was
gathered from the author's very limited experience only and is effectively
just a minimal collection of "lessons learned."

______________________________________________________________________

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. The "basic sign"

3. Materials

4. Putting it all together

5. Further resources

6. Updates/corrections

7. Revision history

______________________________________________________________________

1. Introduction

Seems like lately we've been having a lot of protests, and making signs is
an essential part of participating in a protest. Doing this is fairly
easy, but it's even easier when you know what you are doing. It's
especially good when you know what it is you need to buy, and be able to
set a budget before you go shopping. Most of my experience comes from
working on the first Dmitry Sklyarov protest in San Jose. I hope this will
be helpful to everyone who's making protest signs. It should be noted that
we did all our shopping at K-Mart and Home Depot; the "where to buy"
information is thus just with regard to those two places -- there're
probably better places to buy some of the stuff, but we don't know what
they are.

______________________________________________________________________

2. The "basic sign"

A basic sign should posess several qualities:

1. It should be sturdy so it doesn't blow over in the wind or fall apart.

2. It should be double-sided, because people look at you from all sides.

3. It should be easy to hold, because you may end up protesting for
   several hours, and you wouldn't want your arms to fall off.

4. It should carry a clear, concise, and easily readable message.

______________________________________________________________________

3. Materials

a. Lots of cardboard.

Cardboard is a fairly common commodity. However, if you happen to run out,
you can purchase card-board boxes at hardware stores, like Home Depot.
Discarded cardboard boxes may be found anywhere where people use or sell
lots of stuff that comes in cardboard boxes. Use your imagination.

b. Lots of posterboard.

The posterboard should be about 2' x 3'. You can use any color. White
works best, light neon colors work well too. You can use black, and
spray-paint it with white enamel. These go for about $.60 a piece, and can
be found at pretty much any place that sells art supplies for kids (K-Mart
worked for us).

c. Markers.

FAT BLACK PERMANENT MARKERS. You can never go wrong with those (the fatter
the better). However, it never hurts to add some happy colors to your
signs as well; a set of 1/4"-thick Crayola markers(?) proved quite useful.
Sharpies can also be nice for drawing in fine details, but are less
practical for "quick and dirty" signs that need to be readable and quick
to make. While colored markers and sharpies can be found in any "art
supplies for kids" section, finding sufficiently FAT black markers has
proven to be more difficult. Perhaps a specialized "art supplies" store
would help?

d. Pencils/erasers.

Useful for sketching sign layout before you start coloring everything in
with markers/stencils.

e. Stencils and tape (optional).

If you have terrible handwriting, or just want your signs to look really
neat, use stencils. If possible, check if the stencil set you're buying is
complete; we've somehow ended up with missing letters in ours. Buying
multiple sets is advised, since it is easier to use pre-arranged words,
and words tend to have repeat letters. Stencils can be found, e.g., at a
hardware store. Get some narrow transparent tape (a la 3M's Scotch tape)
too, for holding the stencils together.

f. Spray-paint (optional).

This is particularly useful if you get stencils. Be forewarned that
spray-painting text without stencils is difficult and yields rather
poor-looking results [in our experience]. Furthermore, even with stencils,
spray-painting stencils IS AN ART. Get some practice before doing it for
real. A person with prior spray-painting experience proved to be _very_
instrumental in our experience. A large spraypaint can costs around $2 at
a hardware store.

Spray paint is also useful if you bought a bunch of black posterboard, and
have nothing to write with on it. You can either spray paint your message
directly, or spray paint the board white, wait for it to dry and then
write with regular markers on the dried spray-paint.

g. Shipping tape.

One roll of fat shipping tape lasts forever, but get two. It's about $3 a
roll.

h. Staples and staple gun or stapler.

You may need to to staple the cardboard and the posterboard to a stick.
You will need fairly long staples for this, in the vicinity of 3/4 of an
inch. Obviously a staple-gun would be essential. You may also use glue,
but it's not as sturdy, and much messier.

i. Cutting tools.

You will need to cut cardboard. A pocket knife will do just fine. An
exacto knife can be useful for some tasks as well (such as making
additional stencils). Scissors are useful for cutting tape and other
stuff.

j. Wooden sticks.

The length should be about 4-5 feet. The cross section should be either
rectangular or rounded -- the rounded ones are easier on your hands, but
harder to attach to the cardboard. The diameter for the round
cross-section should be about 1-1.5"; the dimensions of the rectangular
cross-section should be about 1"x2.5". You want a good portion of the
stick inside the posterboard and still have something to hold on to. Home
Depot works well for this; you can cut the right length right in the
store. Sticks can be replaced by multiple cardboard strips or cardboard
tubes, but we recommend against this.

______________________________________________________________________

4. Putting it all together.

a. Figure out what you want to put on the signs. Make sure your messages
are short enough to fit onto signs in VERY LARGE LETTERS. Target length
should be 4 words. Anything past 8-10 words is almost guaranteed to be
unusable. Remember that each sign can have 2 distinct slogans, one for
each side.

b. Assuming you came up with a clever message, write it on the poster
board. Use a pencil to do a quick sketch of what you want on the poster to
make sure you don't run out of space at the end of a line or at the bottom
of the text area; definitely do a sketch first if you want to add any
non-text "artwork". It is often forgotten that a posterboard has two
sides, so if you mess up on one side there's always the other one. Since
our target "model" is cardboard sandwiched between two posterboards, one
side of each posterboard will be out of sight.

c. Take another poster board and write a different message.

d. Take a large piece of cardboard, and place one of your posterboards
with a message onto the cardboard. Cut around the posterboard until you
have a piece of cardboard which is the same size as your posterboard. You
may prepare these uniformly sized pieces of cardboard ahead of time.

e. Now take one of the posterboards and place it onto the cardboard. Then
place both of these over a stick, and run a few staples into the stick
from the posterboard side. You can also use glue. Then place the other
posterboard on the other side. Staple the posterboard to the stick as
well. If you have short staples, you may want to staple the two
posterboards to the cardboard as well. Now tape both of the posterboards
and the cardboard together along the edges. If you do not have wooden
sticks, you can use a double-width (at least) strip of cardboard or a
cardboard tube, although this will make the sign less sturdy and more
unpleasant to hold. If you use multiple layers of cardboard strips, wrap
them with shipping tape for stability and holdability (is that a word?).

At this point, you should have constructed a picket sign. If you
constructed a turbo jet engine instead, disassemble it, re-read the
instructions carefully, and start over from step (b).

______________________________________________________________________

5. Further Resources

The Australian Critics of Scientology group has some useful information
about picket signs, which some of this document stems from; it's posted
at:

http://scn.martinobrien.com/picket/ETHERCAT/GERARD/DEMO/HOWTO/INDEX.HTM#signs

At the time of writing, this seems to be the sole useful resource on
the subject that Google knows about.

______________________________________________________________________

6. Updates/Corrections

To contribute corrections or additions to this document, email the author
at <sign-making at happycool.com>. The author reserves the right to stop
maintaining this document at any point in time.

______________________________________________________________________

7. Revision history

28 Jul 2001 - 0.0.1 - VP - created