Printable Flyers: Going Old-School

[eabrace]

The idea of visiting local comic shops with bulletin boards just came up in another thread.  It then occurred to me:  we should put together a printable flyer that people can distribute.  Maybe something that looks like a concert flyer, or like in-game billboards or graffiti.  People could just grab the image, print, and hang one on a bulletin board at the comic shop.

Thoughts?

[CMKook]

I will call my local comic shop tomorrow and see if they have any issues with that.

[Vulpy]

If you can get me a .pdf of a flyer, I'll hit the comic shops here in town.

[Dr Shadow]

If I lived in Seattle I would be sticking flyers under windshield wipers of NCSOFT cars, and stand outside their building handing them out!

[LightofthePhoenix]

I'd already been thinking about this but unfortunately my computer is currently on the fritz and won't let Microsoft Office or just about anything else install so I'm stuck without the means of making a flyer myself.  If someone can get a printable PDF I'd see about putting it up on one of the bulletin boards on my college campus and maybe at the comic shop down on main street.

[emu265]

As soon as we get something I can print out, I'll run it by campus life office or whatever it's called and see if I can't put them up around school.  I also have free printing via my boyfriend's on-campus job  

[CMKook]

here are some flyers you can print and cut (also downloadable at my DA page:


and a Black and white version more photocopier friendly:

[Altoholic Monkey]

here are some flyers you can print and cut (also downloadable at my DA page:

That web address has to be shorter, please use a shortened link with bit.ly (use a custom name) or make it a QR code or both.  People are not prone to typing in long URLs from a flyer.

[Sekoia]

Adding a QR code could be good, too. That'd eliminate the typing entirely. (Google "qr code generator", there's lots of them out there.)

[CMKook]

QR codes added, I actually do not own a smart phone so if some one can print one off and tell me if it works that would be great

[johnrobey]

Nifty! and I love that it's old-school.

[raine84]

QR codes added, I actually do not own a smart phone so if some one can print one off and tell me if it works that would be great

My printer is on the fritz but I was able to scan it directly from the screen and it worked.

[CMKook]

thanks for tellin me ^_^

[Stormsurge]

Way ahead of you guys actually. Although now I wish I saw this thread before I accomplished my mission this morning of printing flyers and leaving them on the "flyer" table at the Baltimore Comic-con. Someone's bound to be interested.

[Christine]

This is the one I made for Superhero Night at the AFK Tavern:

http://sabledrake.com/save_cox_flier.pdf

-- C.

[jordanhb]

That web address has to be shorter, please use a shortened link with bit.ly (use a custom name) or make it a QR code or both.  People are not prone to typing in long URLs from a flyer.

Using a bit.ly address probably isn't a good idea.  I know a lot of people who won't click on bit.ly addresses at all, because it's so easy for people to send you to malware that way.

[Altoholic Monkey]

Using a bit.ly address probably isn't a good idea.  I know a lot of people who won't click on bit.ly addresses at all, because it's so easy for people to send you to malware that way.

It's on a flyer, there's no clicking involved.  I have the stats on the bit.ly link I created and trust me people have no problems clicking on said link.

[Mister Bison]

bit.ly/saveCOH ? you can't have trouble with that link.

bit.ly/&kjqsdb-garbage, maybe.

[jordanhb]

It's on a flyer, there's no clicking involved.

Yes, I understand that.  I simply meant "go to that web address".  There's no need to be pedantic about it.

I have the stats on the bit.ly link I created and trust me people have no problems clicking on said link.

Okay, just pointing out a potential problem. 

[Altoholic Monkey]

Yes, I understand that.  I simply meant "go to that web address".  There's no need to be pedantic about it.

I wasn't trying to be, I honestly assumed you were confused. No harm done.

[Spark Inferno]

Hey I am not the best at doing things like this via the PC but as a CoH vet since May 2004. I need to do my part. I created a flyer but I am not good at resizing in the crappy programs I currently have. If anyone wants to use it feel free. Also feel free to add any other sites you may think will be helpful. I can do calligraphy if anyone has a need for it. My Love goes out to all of the People who helped make CoH and all of you doing whatever you can to save something more than just a game but an extention of all our families.

[Gilliam]

Any chance of a poster sized one !!

[Spark Inferno]

NP I am currently working with a couple of programs to perfect the original to make 8.5 x 11 so I am sure I can make it even bigger. Will post links as soon as they are ready.

[Spark Inferno]

Okay i found a site I can upload the actual PDF files so I will add the links here now and they have been tested. BTW, please excuse the missing space between Good & Night a typo not caught until too late.

http://pdfcast.org/pdf/save-coh-poster

http://pdfcast.org/pdf/save-coh-flyer

[rachlols]

Made a PDF, tried to keep it minimalistic and throw some stylized typography in there to hopefully catch the eye.
Let me know if you'd like any tweaks of this design/ different sizes or versions- it should print out fine in B&W.

http://pdfcast.org/pdf/save-coh-print-out

Preview image of the pdf printout

[Moonfyire101]

Printing tomorrow, will be at 3 comic stores, 3 game stores, reptile show and college campus. This is only the 1st in the series. This image is 300 dpi png, pdf available upon request. http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy194/vmieu/SaveourCity003QR.png


Added the QR code for the petition since i wanted to use the long link for it since it's more descriptive.

[maxxrpg]

I've put the flyers up in our stores with the new comics and next to cash register.  Will report how many people respond to it.

[eabrace]

Nice, official-looking display!

[Spark Inferno]

Added the typo fix and the QR code for the petition site

http://pdfcast.org/pdf/qr-coded-poster

Also created a more black & white poster size 20x30

http://pdfcast.org/pdf/b-w-20x30-poster

[CFIndustries]

I've made this offer to TonyV directly, but I am a graphic/production designer by trade (among other things) working in marketing, so I have access to, and skill with, Photoshop (strong), Illustrator (decent), and InDesign (expert). Which of course means artwork created for print and PDF output. ;-p

So if y'all need help with flyers, banners, etc. I'll help if I can. Also can do hardcopy work at-cost on some quite decent equipment at work (can't be free, but is cheaper than Kinko's). Flyers, vinyl banners, shirts, etc.

(As an FYI I can also help with Web QA, FileMaker database work, and copy "massaging" and authoring if we need that sort of thing.)

Until I saw this thread I assumed we were going strictly online, which makes a bit of sense given it's an online game, and my expertise isn't in that realm (design-wise).

But down to the objective bits: While I applaud the aesthetics of the art and flyers I've seen thumbnails of in this thread, and if "grass roots" is all want, then fine. Don't read any further, because this is blunt design/marketing criticism, which is to say good designers understand the psychology of message delivery.

However, if we really are about the message, all the examples suffer from some or all of the novice design/marketing issues such as poor readability, too-lengthy copy, mixed fonts, poor information heirarchy, etc. Simple. Is. Better.

So it really depends on the image we're trying to project, and if the image is more important than the message.

[Altoholic Monkey]

I'm still looking for feedback on the flyer I'm working which is more like a newspaper. Bold headlines etc, but I since my brain has gone to sleep, I'll need some help with what exactly should go on it.  I'd be more than happy to hear professional feedback.

I would like to use the hero composite shot but it's a lower resolution and that will not work well with print. The rest of the flyer is print quality, 300ppi.  So another image will have to do.  CFIndustries, if you have any advice I'd be happy to hear it.  Or any ideas.  I'm fairly decent with Photoshop, and have experience with InDesign and Illustrator.   Also, you do not have to hold back on any ideas for fear of crushing spirits, I'm not married to anything here.

[Aggelakis]

Also created a more black & white poster size 20x30

http://pdfcast.org/pdf/b-w-poster-savecoh

[img]

Ummmm, you forgot "night" on the left side. "We will not go quietly into that good night."

[Spark Inferno]

thank you cut it off in the save now I got to go fix it again lol


update: Fixed it lol but had to modify the original link in the original post.

[CFIndustries]

Hey Monkey,

"Newsletter style" is a decent way to do it if you want them to read a "wall of text." But you'll have to hook them in, and to do that you have to understand who "they" are.

(And yes I know how marketing-speak that sounds. And yes, marketers on the whole are their own branch of evil. But they DO know how to get their message across with missile-like accuracy. Sucks to know it from the inside sometimes...I feel like a mole..)

If someone has a demorecord of the group scene and a high-res widescreen display and can get a screen shot, that might be enough for print (at 8.5x11). A color or greyscale photo can survive down to 200dpi and be acceptable. Let's not forget our game isn't exactly Mass Effect, so a little pixelation won't kill us. This would be a case of "pixelation might add that element of 'grassroots' in an otherwise 'professional' piece."

There also might be ways to up-rez the image, I think there is still a very pricey Photoshop plugin for the purpose here at work I can try, but it helps to have the best possible source before the up-rez.

You might consider not cramming all the heads and subheads quite so much, and not use all-caps except for the BIG headline at top (all-caps reduces readability).

Any other critique would have to wait until there is content. If you do it in InDesign, I'd be happy to tweak it once you have it done, we can pass the file back and forth in email. I'm on a Mac though, so bear that in mind.

(Ironically, I play CoX on a PC...but in the design world, it's all Mac all the time...)

Trick is I don't have tons of time to sit and brainstorm my own ideas,  but it's fairly quick for me to turn-around fine-tuning of something existing. Besides, y'all probably have waaaay more passion than I do, I'm happy to just point that passion in a constructive direction and let you go to town.

[eabrace]

[Altoholic Monkey]

[eabrace]

I have that image already, I used it in my mock up.

Excellent.  Just making sure everyone was aware.

I'll leave you to it. 

[CFIndustries]

[CFIndustries]

First, thank you for the feedback it was awesome. Don't worry about marketing speak, I'm studying strategic communication, so marketing speak doesn't bother me.

I daresay not, I've been in meetings with the folks in PR (which is my exposure to the strategy stuff), and...wow. Yeah I'm betting you'll be market-speaking rings around me soon enough. ;-p

I really don't want to it to be wall of text style. So I'm fine with taking out the article sections.  To allow for more spacing between the headlines.

Well, if you're going to have a mock-newspaper, you need article content to complete the piece. It should be very useful or well tuned copy, but it should be considered "throw away" in case it's not read (useful if it is, not a big deal if it isn't).

Unfortunately, its the content I'm having trouble with. Exactly what to say to capture the attention of those who haven't played the game, but are comic fans. A lot of people are trying to get comic and gaming stores to put flyers in their shops. So I want something that speaks to that audience about what happened.

Any advice for the content itself?

That I would not be able to speak to as well. Happy to fine-tune whatever copy you come up with or others might provide, but while I have done quite a bit of copywriting for manuals and documentation, more of it has been "someone else writes the copy, I make it better without changing what they mean." TonyV might be a good source for ideas or some canned copy we've been using in other communications.

Again thank you for your time, it's very helpful.  Alternatively, I can try another design direction as well more high on impact, low on substance.

This is the tightrope...I want to help, but I'm short on my own ideas. Others here have great ideas that just need fine tuning and tweaking ("direction" you might say). I'm not going to shoot down ideas, just give advice on how to make your idea work the hardest it can.

I'm happy to play support, I'll let you idea makers be the melee players. ;-p

[Spark Inferno]

Once I get going it's so hard to stop when the ideas pop in.

here's the latest flyer. It's a handout style mini about 5 x 11.

http://pdfcast.org/images/s/2899/mini-flyer.jpg

[Altoholic Monkey]

Once I get going it's so hard to stop when the ideas pop in.

here's the latest flyer. It's a handout style mini about 5 x 11.

http://pdfcast.org/images/s/2899/mini-flyer.jpg

May I ask what you're using to make the flyers?...not the pdfs.

[Spark Inferno]

it's a online program I use to make stuff for my kids nothing big time but works okay it's called Poster wizard.

Also forgot to mention I fix up the various photos using Gimp 2 but haven't quite figured out have to make Gimp type doesn't want to do much else either.

[Moonfyire101]

Villains flyer done http://s791.photobucket.com/albums/yy194/vmieu/ 2 more to go. 300dpi png, pdf available upon request.

EDIT I couldn't sleep so i fixed it now. Also, thank Rockdeadman.deviantart.com for all the work he's done on these. I just help him. He does most of the work.

[eabrace]

"Aracnos" should be "Arachnos".

I like it, though.

[Moonfyire101]

ty will change in morning...falling asleep, it hasn't been sent to the printers yet.

[eabrace]

Also:

"quandry" -> "quandary"
"enimes" -> "enemies"

[Moonfyire101]

oh god how tired am i...all these mistakes....crp...tomorrow...cannot spell or think....ty ty ty

[eabrace]

Welcome. 

[Vulpy]

oh god how tired am i...all these mistakes....crp...tomorrow...cannot spell or think....ty ty ty

Actually, two of the three mistakes involved a dropped "a". If I were you, I'd blame the keyboard...even if it's not true. >.>

[Moonfyire101]

Yes, thats it! keyboard! Or no sleep...Anyway here is the preview, the link is above in another post. As always if you want the pdf just ask. Everything is 300 dpi

Fixing now....again...lack of sleep killing us lol.

[eabrace]

Man, I really hate to say this, but...  I missed typo.  Another missing 'a', no less.  "Pargon's oblivion"

Edit: Didn't really need that quote block.

[Spark Inferno]

Made another poster it's not 100% perfect but it's very simple.

http://pdfcast.org/pdf/death-of-coh

[jsndolly]

Love the idea. Please forward a printable PDF for me too! 
@Xterra

[Moonfyire101]

[Vulpy]

<Recluse flyer picture>

Awesome. Love the redside take on it.

[CFIndustries]

Oh, nice. Heck, even the illustration of Lord Recluse is better than most of what Paragon itself did. Nicely done!

Anybody have a "www.savecoh.com" or similar domain so we can make the petition easier to get at? "www.savecoh.com/petition/" would be MUCH easier on the causal viewer (and then that redirects to the actual petition URL). Would also allow handy redirects such as /facebook/.

Trick used all the time in marketing, commonly referred to as Vanity URLs. And if you manage your domain with something like MyDomain.com, redirects aren't to hard to set-up.

[Tacitala]

Made another poster it's not 100% perfect but it's very simple.

Might I suggest making the "This doesn't have to happen!" more prominent, maybe put it in larger font at the top of the flyer or fade out the tombstone and superimpose "This doesn't have to happen!" over the faded image?  As is the flyer is it looks like the game has already died, and that's definitely not what we want to show off.

[eabrace]

Anybody have a "www.savecoh.com" or similar domain so we can make the petition easier to get at?

http://bit.ly/savecoh

[CFIndustries]

http://bit.ly/savecoh

Functional, but not necessarily as handy to some generations who don't use Twitter. ;-p

Generally it's easier for less-saavy (or "older" if you prefer) users to go for an actual domain name.

(Myself, for example, could memorize that. But I must admit that being from an earlier time in the internet's birth, and not being a Twitter user, I use TinyURL out of habit.)

And if there is something I found most fascinating about the CoX player base is that there is a much larger "adult" crowd than any other MMO I've been exposed to, and who are not necessarily hardcore gamers or super-saavy.

Be that as it may, these printed pieces should start using the Bitly shortened version over that long word-soup URL, if only to save people's wrists who are writing it down; and also make the layout of the materials alot easier.

[eabrace]

Functional, but not necessarily as handy to some generations who don't use Twitter. ;-p

I've haven't even had a Twitter account for more than a few months, but I've been using www.tinyurl.com for almost a decade, so I guess when I started seeing bit.ly address pop up, I just naturally adapted to using them. 

(Not that I've ever actually created one myself.)

[CFIndustries]

I've haven't even had a Twitter account for more than a few months, but I've been using www.tinyurl.com for almost a decade, so I guess when I started seeing bit.ly address pop up, I just naturally adapted to using them. 

(Not that I've ever actually created one myself.)

It's a bit of hair splitting in the end, I just know what I know from marketing and in our world we don't use Bitly outside of Twitter; user retention is better with branded renditions of the standard "www.sitename.com" construction when using them in the print world.

Either way, needs to be shorter for the flyers/posters; and Bitly is definitely a strong second choice of solution for that verbose petition URL. You figure people either need to memorize it or write it down. Or worst case they bust out their camera phone (so shorter URL is still easier to get close to and photograph clearly).

We need to treat this as an emotional, point-of-purchase, impulse thing. We get one quick shot to suck the reader in, the path of least resistance is good.

[Moonfyire101]

tinyurl.savecoh.com

that one works but i used the long one only becuase it is descriptive. i can change it before i shp it off to the printers if you want. They just called, they havn't printed it yet. The phone code is the long url.

[Altoholic Monkey]

By the way... I own the savecoh.com domain.

[CFIndustries]

tinyurl.savecoh.com

that one works but i used the long one only becuase it is descriptive. i can change it before i shp it off to the printers if you want. They just called, they havn't printed it yet. The phone code is the long url.

I'd go with whatever concensus is in terms of Bitly vs. TinyURL, everyone has their bias. I'm just suggesting shorter is better. "Self Descriptive" the long one may be, but not terribly "handy" on a printed piece.

[Moonfyire101]

i had to make changes to my order anyway, one more edit won't hurt.

[Spark Inferno]

Might I suggest making the "This doesn't have to happen!" more prominent, maybe put it in larger font at the top of the flyer or fade out the tombstone and superimpose "This doesn't have to happen!" over the faded image?  As is the flyer is it looks like the game has already died, and that's definitely not what we want to show off.

Well unfortunatelt thats the largest type face the online program I use has for a 20x30 size poster. But I can't see how it makes it look like it's already dead because it says 1. Save Our Vity of heroes & 2. R.I.P. April 27th, 2004 - Nov. 30th, 2012

However I can alter it to Say Is this what we want for the future or something along those lines.

[Spark Inferno]

Okay revamped the last poster for those who feel it was coming accross as if it was too late to help. Think I am done with posters for a bit now.

http://pdfcast.org/pdf/death-of-coh-2

[CMKook]

Okay revamped the last poster for those who feel it was coming accross as if it was too late to help. Think I am done with posters for a bit now.

http://pdfcast.org/pdf/death-of-coh-2

the only issue I see is for flyers you want it to be able to be photocopied to Black and white and this won't do that well

[Altoholic Monkey]

Anybody have a "www.savecoh.com" or similar domain so we can make the petition easier to get at? "www.savecoh.com/petition/" would be MUCH easier on the causal viewer (and then that redirects to the actual petition URL). Would also allow handy redirects such as /facebook/.

Since I own that particular domain, I created a sub domain redirect for the petition:  http://petition.savecoh.com

If we need any more subdomain redirects for the savecoh.com domain, please let me know.

[Spark Inferno]

okay so I fixed the last poster to be b&w friendly.

http://pdfcast.org/pdf/death-of-coh-b-w-friendly

[Moonfyire101]

resistance flyer http://s791.photobucket.com/albums/yy194/vmieu/  As always, the pdf is available upon request. The pdf also has a shorter url.



Be sure to thank rockdeadman on deviant art for the flyers http://rockdeadman.deviantart.com/ . Also, the villains one with edits is available in pdf. Fixed spelling issues.

[Altoholic Monkey]

Thank you all for the feedback on Twitter!  I made some slight adjustments. I will be creating another flyer that matches the characters on the banners I created. So for folks who wanted a more super hero type flyer, it is coming soon(tm) (later this week).  Considering what a week we've had already, I think the fist raised in defiance does portray some of our feelings, well at least mine anyway.   



Download links - Print ready, 8.75 x 11.25 inches

PDF Version - 1.83 MB approx.
http://www.repeat-offenders.net/savecoh/SaveCOH_Flyer_A.pdf

JPG Version - 1.97 MB approx.
http://www.repeat-offenders.net/savecoh/SaveCOH_Flyer_A.jpg