This is something I quickly put together for the Blackpool gathering in the hope that it will be some use to someone. Basically a summary of what I do re making stuff to send and give out as cheaply as I can.
Some Information and
Practical Ideas for Producing Home Made Campaigning Materials
Andrew Johnson (ad.johnson@ntlworld.com),
Jan 2006
Download Campaign Materials
from: http://tinyurl.com/2zxfcy
1.1
Sources/Suppliers of materials etc
1.2
DVD Duplication
1.2.1
Cheap DVDs
(Approx 15p each) when bought
in batches of 100. Try to get in 100 or 200 as postage always adds 25 or 30% to
the cost (from SVP)
Single layer DVD-R will play in
most players. “Printable” ones now cost little or no more than
“non-printable”. Much quicker and neater than hand writing – also means
you can put in clear plastic wallets – simple and cheap packaging (and light
for posting).
1.2.2
Burners + Duplicators
Pioneer DVR 111 is supposedly
one of the best ones (I have one). They are £20 each. An external (USB) burner
can be got for about £45 from SVP.
Nero 7 PC Burning Software can
be for from SVP for about £5.
Approx £250 – you can buy
them empty or full of drives (i.e. built or in kits).
Can fit a hard drive into most
of these (which will multiple DVD “images”)
1.2.3
Plastic Wallets
Approx 1p each when bought in
packets of 100. Paper wallets can generally be more expensive.
1.3
Printing
1.3.1
Printer and Ink
I use an Epson R200 DVD Printer
(Approx £60), now superseded by R265. New cartridges for this printer are
currently expensive – and full sets of 6 cartrdiges sell on e-bay for approx
£20-£25.
For earlier EPSON R200, I use
cheap “clone” Cartridges (Approx £1 each – 30 for £2. Each cartridge
does about 200 or so pages.
1.3.2
Paper
Decent A4 paper (80 grams per
square meter) can be got for about £2/ream from SVP, although postage can add
to this. Wilko’s can also be cheap. Viking Direct can be cheap too.
1.4
Stickers
I have used 3 different
styles – 24 on A4 (white), 24 on A4 (fluorescent yellow) and 8 on A4.
You can stick these anywhere. They are best indoors. I have sprayed some sheets
with “fabsil” to give them a little water resistance. This adds a little to
the cost, however.
1.5
Booklets
These are a little more tricky
to do, although the later versions of Microsoft
Word (2003) have booklet printing features built in (but I haven’t used
these).
I currently print –
“Tyranny Alert’s 9/11 Fairy Tale from Hell”, Steve Jones WTC paper and
Morgan Reynolds and Judy Wood’s critique of this.
A while ago, I looked at
getting booklets printed professionally, but with minimum order of 50 or 100, it
was looking like between £1 and £5 per small booklet. I worked out I could
print them myself at a cost of approx 20p each (including Paper and Ink)
I use some software called
“Fine Print 2000” which can generate booklets, 4 pages per sheet, 8 per
sheet etc. However, I have a PDF writer so can generate PDF’s ready to print
out as booklets if you need this
I can print 10 copies of 1 side
of the booklet, flip the wad over in the printer, then print 10 copies on the
other side. I then use the long arm stapler (£17 from e-bay) to staple the
sheets together – a very simple process.
1.6
Laminated Acetates
These are fairly easy to make
and also quite cheap – approx 10p each, if you get the acetates in boxes of
100 (e-bay - £6 or £7). These can be attached to traffic light pillars,
signposts etc. I used to use tie-wraps to put them up – these are good, but at
about 4 – 5p each they add to the cost (again you can get packs of 100 for
about £5 from e-bay).
I have now started using
insulated wire (I have an old reel). I had one A4 laminated sheet on a busy set
of traffic lights (A52 into Nottingham) which survived for about 2 months!
1.7
Banner Printing
My printer software supports
printing an enlarged A4 design across multiple sheets, but I haven’t made use
of this yet!
1.8
Business Cards
I have had several boxes of
these from www.vistaprint.co.uk - you
can get 250 for about £3 or £3.50 – sometimes you can get 500 for £6. These
are very good. They often give you other free things like address labels and you
can re-order through the web site.
1.9
Campaign Kit
These are just sheets printed
in large text, put into plastic A4 wallets (I got about 400 for £8 from
partners on a 2 for 1 offer). You can put these in an A4 ring binder, then use
them to illustrate key points, if you are talking to people in the street.
Again, you can make 1 for £1 or £2 (if you get the wallets in smaller packs).
1.10
Packaging / Posting
All the materials I use are
recycled – quite often what I’ll do is keep the boxes/packets that DVD’s,
printer cartridges etc are delivered in, then cut them up to use for smaller
packets. Also generally keep other packaging from stuff we get.
Breakfast cereal packets can
also be cut up.
Junk mail can sometimes contain
A5/C5 (half-A4 envelopes). Using these in conjunction with re-cycled cereal
packets can make packages which will keep disks protected enough.
Alternatively, cheap envelopes
can often be got from “pound shops”, Wilkinsons (Wilcos), e-bay or Viking
Direct (www.viking-direct.co.uk
)
I got a free set of digital
weighing scales on an offer from www.staples.co.uk.
I use this a lot for postage and “counting by weighing”. I get low
denomination stamps then asked people to pay me in stamps for items, then I use
those to post the “next lot of stuff”. This saves people sending cash or
wasting money buying postal orders.