Picket Signs mini-HOWTO Victor Piterbarg & Alex Fabrikant v0.0.9p1, 15 Aug 2001 This document provides a simple introduction to making effective picket signs efficiently. The totality of information presented herein was gathered from the authors' very limited experience only and is effectively just a minimal collection of "lessons learned." ______________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. The "basic sign" 3. Supplies 3.1 Sign components 3.2 Sign handles 3.3 Writing implements 3.4 Tools 4. Putting it all together 4.1 "Standard" design 4.2 Half-size sign 4.3 Handle-less sign 5. Further resources 6. Acknowledgements/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 our experience comes from working on Dmitry Sklyarov protests in the Bay Area and in LA. I hope this will be helpful to everyone who's making protest signs. It should be noted that we did most of our shopping at K-Mart, Home Depot, and Office Depot; the "where to buy" information is thus mostly with regard to those 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 possess 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. Supplies This section lists all the supplies you may possibly need for making signs; take heed of items marked "Optional" -- those are, indeed, optional. Prices (and, consequently, budgets) are very approximate, even as of the date of writing, and can vary widely depending on where you are and where you shop. 3.1. Sign components - Lots of cardboard: Cardboard is a fairly common commodity. However, if you happen to run out, you can purchase cardboard 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 large cardboard boxes. Use your imagination (or buy some [boxes... or imagination]). Cost is effectively $0. - Lots of posterboard: The posterboard should be standard size (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 $0.40-$0.80 a piece, and can be found at pretty much any place that sells art supplies for kids (K-Mart worked for us). Larger sizes of posterboard can be difficult to carry, but can also yield a couple of _very_ visible signs if used appropriately. - Foam core (optional): A more expensive but faster alternative to using posterboard and cardboard, then attaching the two together. Larger sizes may not hold up to wind, and thus require cardboard backing anyway. - Shipping tape: One roll of fat transparent shipping tape lasts forever, but get two. It's about $2-$3 a roll anywhere. 3.2. Sign handles In general, the handle length should either be ~4-5 feet if you intend to hold the sign in the air, or ~8-9 feet if you want to be able to put the handle on the ground and still have the sign visible above the crowd (this is likely to be implausible with lathes or cardboard tubes since they will break/bend easily). - Wooden sticks: 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 or get pre-cut sticks. Price: e.g. $10 for a bundle of 8 6'x1"x2" sticks. - Laths (optional): Unfinished wood, often varying in quality, noticeably cheaper, and often too thin to be durable. If it's much thinner than an inch, you're risking having the thing snap in the middle of everything. Make sure you look through the pile at whichever place you buy these at, since you can often find usable pieces among a bunch of crappy ones. We're told ~20 pieces of reasonable size can be obtained for ~$5. - Cardboard tubes (optional): In certain situations, police may ask that you not use wooden sticks as a safety precaution; in that situation, the next best alternative is sturdy cardboard tube. This is likely to be more expensive though, and the signs won't come out as durable. Should be obtainable from any mailing supplies store; price estimate N/A. A strip of multi-ply cardboard, or several strips of single-ply cardboard "cocooned" together with shipping tape can also work for handles. Remember to wrap the "holding" area of the handle with tape if you do this; else, the sign will be quite unpleasant to hold. 3.3. Writing implements - FAT BLACK PERMANENT MARKERS: You can never go wrong with those (the fatter the better). They are apparently to be found at office supplies stores -- Office Depot has 1"+ width markers; those have prices in the $1-$2 range; we're told Office Max doesn't carry these. Narrower (1/2"?) "Marks-a-lots" are sold in boxes of 10 at about $5. - Color markers: It never hurts to add some happy colors to your signs as well; a set of 1/4"-thick Crayola markers(?) proved quite useful. Can be found in any "art supplies for kids" section. ~$3 will buy a set of 8. - Pencils/erasers: Useful for sketching sign layout before you start coloring everything in with markers/stencils, especially if you have time to make signs neatly. Once again, don't forget to get erasers. And have a pencil sharpener around unless you're using mechanical pencils. "Cheap." Erasers are around $0.50, wood pencils are much less than that. - 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. Large stencils can be found at an office supplies store (or at a hardware store). Get some narrow transparent tape (a la 3M's Scotch tape) too, for holding the stencils together. A set of stencils is around $3; tape is around $0.50. - 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 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. Spray paint is also useful if you bought a bunch of black posterboard, and have nothing to write on it with. 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. A large can of paint costs ~$2 at a hardware store. - "Window chalk" (optional): Odd-looking things that we found at K-Mart -- thick, foam-tipped, ink-based. These are fairly expensive ($8 for a set of 4), but yield bright color, and are quick to use given the tip thickness. The ink is so thick that the lighter colors can easily be used on black posterboard with decent results, and white can be used as fast whiteout for large areas. - Fine markers (optional): "Sharpies" can 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. Can be found in any "art supplies for kids" section. 3.4. Tools - Staples and staple gun/stapler: You may need to staple the cardboard and the posterboard to a stick. You will need fairly long staples for this, in the vicinity of 3/4" (9/16" has worked in the past). Obviously a staple-gun would be very useful, but a stapler can substitute if need be. You may also use glue, but it's not as sturdy, and much messier. Don't get staple gun staples shorter than 1/2". - Nails and hammer/nailgun (optional): A potential alternative to using staples. - Knife: You will need to cut cardboard. A utility knife is best, but a pocket knife will work too. - Scissors: Always useful for cutting tape and other stuff. - Exacto knife (optional): Can be useful for some tasks, such as making additional stencils. ______________________________________________________________________ 4. Putting it all together. This section gives the instructions for making a "standard"-design picket sign and some adjustments that can be made to them while still yielding a usable sign. 4.1. "Standard" design a. Figure out what you want to put on the sign. Make sure your messages are short enough to fit onto the sign 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. You can use either the "landscape" (longest side horizontal) or "portrait" (shortest side horizontal) orientation; the stick should run through at least 2/3 of the dimension along which it's inserted; also make sure to CENTER the stick and make sure it crosses all creases in the cardboard so that the sign doesn't fold. 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. DO NOT BOTHER stapling posterboard to the cardboard; if the staples are short enough to not stick out on the other side, they'll soon fall out. Now tape both of the posterboards and the cardboard together along the edges. If you're using cardboard handles, use tape instead of staples. f. If you plan to use the sign in a WINDY AREA, cutting some horizontal slits will help relieve the force exerted on your sign by the wind, making it noticeably easier to hold. 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), or from step (a) if your turbo jet engine does not feature a catchy slogan either. 4.2. Half-size sign Parts (b)-(d) above may be modified by using only 1 posterboard, and folding it across the longer dimension, and inserting a half-sized piece of cardboard inside. The rest of the instructions hold, although a thinner handle may suffice here. 4.3. Handle-less sign If you are out of handles or are intentionally making signs to be held below head-level, and are thus not using handles, make sure you _cut_ holes into the cardboard to serve as handles; these should be at least 1.5" from the side and wide enough to allow people to stick hands through them easily. ______________________________________________________________________ 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. Acknowledgements/Updates/Corrections This document was created and is currently being maintained by Victor Piterbarg and Alex Fabrikant. The following people (among others whom we've probably forgotten) have contributed information and pointers as well: C. Scott Ananian, Don Marti, Paul Palinkas, Morgan W., Andrea. Let us know if your name is missing. To contribute corrections or additions to this document, email the authors at . The authors reserve the right to stop maintaining this document at any point in time. ______________________________________________________________________ 7. Revision history 28 Jul 2001 - 0.0.1 - VP - created; initial helping of info 15 Aug 2001 - 0.0.9 - AF - "supplies"&"putting it all together" sections expanded; document restructured; more misc info