This is an updated version of something I posted in January.
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
UK - Order Campaign Materials from:http://tinyurl.com/3d7xet
1
Sources/Suppliers of materials etc
2
DVD Duplication
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).
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, though there is also free burner software
available such as:
Deepburner: http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/DeepBurner/deepburner.html
CDBurnerX P Pro: http://www.cdburnerxp.se/download.php
Approx £250 – you can buy
them empty or full of drives (i.e. built or in kits). I was recently loaned a ACARD duplicator
and have been quite impressed with it. Using a “3-up”, it is possible to churn
out perhaps 18 disks per hour
Can fit a hard drive into
most of these (which will multiple DVD “images”)
2.3
Plastic Wallets
Approx 1p each when bought in
packets of 100. Paper wallets can generally be more expensive.
3
Printing
3.1
Printer and Ink
3.1.1
Printer
I use an Epson R220 DVD
Printer (Approx £60), now superseded by R265. New cartridges for this printer
are currently expensive – and full sets of 6 cartridges sell on e-bay for
approx £20-£25.
For earlier EPSON R220, I use
cheap “clone” Cartridges (Approx £1 each – 30 for £2
. Each cartridge does
about 200 or so pages.
This reduces paper costs to
approximately 1p per A4 side of colour, if you get basic 80 gms/sq m.
3.1.2
Continuous Ink Supply System
These can be a little fiddly to
fit, as you have to get the pipes to the cartridges in the right place. They
are now available for the Epson R265 printer (I am not sure if they are
available for other makes of printer.
If you intend to do a lot of printing, then these will
greatly reduce the material cost of printing – to less than most printers will
charge you (and much less when small quantities are involved).
If you are careful when printing, you can get great results.
I have been very pleased with the results for doing booklets, but you almost
inevitably get some wastage if sheets come out in the wrong order or they fall
on the floor and you have to put them back in the right order carefully , so
you can end up with wasted sheets (as I have).
3.2
Paper
Decent A4 paper (80 grams per
square meter) can be got for about £2.50/ream from SVP, although postage can
add to this. Wilko’s can also be cheap. Viking Direct can be cheap too.
3.3
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.
Stickers can also be got from
e-bay, although I found a cheap supplier here:
http://www.clp.co.uk/
3.4
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”, and some other booklets I print.
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.
For more information see
here: http://www.fineprint.com/ - a
free download is available for trial.
3.5
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!
3.6
Banner Printing
My printer software supports
printing an enlarged A4 design across multiple sheets, and this could be useful
in some circumstances, but the problem of assembling the jigsaw for outdoor use
may be problematic. It may be better to print a single letter on an A4 sheet to
make a bigger banner.
Professional printers will do
banners on canvas, vinyl etc and these start at around £30 or £40.
3.7
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. You can choose from some very nice fixed
designs or upload your own, but the latter costs extra.
3.8
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).
4
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 to provide some protection. When sending a
number of DVD’s, I pack them with the labels facing inwards towards each
other, as it is the TOP surface that the dye is attached to.
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 and
they will cost you nothing.
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,
though again these can be got from e-bay. I use this a lot for postage and
“counting by weighing”. I get low denomination stamps, so I can make up the
correct amount. However, Royal Mail now have an online postage facility, which
accepts PayPal, so that may be useful for some people then ask 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.
5
Websites
Obviously, there are many hundreds of Websites, but setting
up your own needn’t be all that difficult. Most of the free services have
templates and simple design tools, but if you want a website for your group, so
that you can post events listings or share information, that will likely need
more sophisticated tools.
Having said that, even the free services offered by MySpace
(www.myspace.com) and Blogger (www.blogger.com) may be sufficient.
There is also the main UK website www.nineeleven.co.uk where events etc can be posted.
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