Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Fun with Polls What Kind of Swag Do You Want?

After posting the second Swag poll, I realized that I should have asked this second question.

The Close Time on this poll are the same as for the Second Fundraising Swag Slogan Poll Friday 4/19/2014 midnight (Message Board time). Here, you can choose as many as you'd like. Be sure you vote on each poll!

I added "other" to the list because I was thinking I would be much more likely to buy a tank top over a t-shirt, but most likely the others are the best bet.

T-shirt and/or notepad. I'll need more kitchen cabinets if I buy one more mug! :p

I did not click 'other' but I really like the tank top idea

Really don't need another mug, but love the thought of sipping on a hot cocoa, from a L&C-related mug, while reading a L&C-related story ...

Laura

Virginia - thanks so much for taking care of all these polls!! Much appreciated!

I do want everyone to know the realities of all the types of SWAG, though! I mentioned in the original slogan thread that anything other than a t-shirt or stickers would be fairly cost-prohibitive:

I'm definitely still willing to set stuff up on CafePress for stuff other than t-shirts so long as people were aware of the costs involved. And that the full cost paid for the items would not go towards the fundraiser. Here\'s CafePress\'s pricing policy. So, for example:

Mug:

Base cost - $10.99
FoLC markup - $5.00 - $15.00
Economy shipping - $6.49

So, minimum price for a mug would be $22.48, which would net the fundraiser only $5.00.

Staples has some cheaper options, starting at $5.50 per mug, but that doesn't include the bulk shipping of the lot to one person, then the shipping costs it'd take to ship out to each FoLC who ordered one.

Notepads seem to be a popular vote so far, too. Just doing a brief search, Vistaprint could do notepads for $8.00 each. This also doesn't account for the shipping.

There's also some cool stuff on Staples.com in their "givaways and promo items" section . The same shipping stuff would apply here, too.

The sticker option from Moo.com would be most cost-effective for shipping.

Please everyone, share your thoughts on this! I personally would LOVE to have almost all of the mentioned swag, but I'm not sure how feasible it all is. I'd love to hear other thoughts and ideas on how this could all work.

Oh! And also, for anything other than a t-shirt, we'll need one of our graphically inclined FoLCs to come up with an image to upload to whichever place we use to create the swag.

Sara

***********This Poll is Now Closed!***********

The majority a whopping 77% voted for T-shirts. (Although a few people noted they'd prefer a tank top.)


Runner up was Coffee Mug. As Sara mentioned this would end up being an expensive option with only $5 out of a roughly $25 mug going to the donation. Mugs are heavier, bulkier, and more breakable than t-shirts and, therefore, also require much more in postage. If you know of a place where we can order custom mugs for less, please let us know!


Third place was a tie (not a literal Clark tie, as in a piece of clothing, but maybe that should have been an option. ): between Baseball Hats and Notepads.

So, it looks like T-Shirts are our best bet. It may be just me, but I think a super blue t-shirt with red letters and a gold boarder would be nice. Of course, we can also go with basic white with black lettering or black with white lettering.

If you're visually artistic, please volunteer to design our t-shirt! Thanks.

Thanks for helping us narrow down our options!

This is just a quick mockup (using Word, so it's nowhere near the needed dpi etc.) of what I imagine the t-shirt could look like. Thoughts? Different ideas? Volunteers to make mock up an image?
Someone could even make the dots/periods look like this so that we know it's Superman without copyright infringement?

CafePress's Tfund has the following requirements for uploads:

We recommend TIFF, EPS, PSD, or CDR files for best results. We also accept PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP files, however the resolution is recommended to be 300 dpi. In the event that the artwork is not reproducible at a level that meets our quality standards our customer service team will email you to help find a solution. In the event that we cannot resolve artwork issues, we may need to cancel the fundraiser including issuing refunds to supporters if necessary.

I've done 2 different ideas.

1. This is a large choice of 'handwriting' fonts. As fanfic is all about writing I though one idea would be to base the t-shirt on 'writing'. If we wanted to go with this, then once the font was chosen we could come up with some further ideas. - Typewriter, quill and ink, etc.



2. Alternatively I thought we could try to appeal to quite a few fandoms. I've included the Superman font, Star Trek and Buffy. The the bottom half is the LnC logo.




At the moment this is very basic and put together in a rush.

Hey, KK, I love all your work on this! Thank you.

How would it look if you switched the fonts on the bottom blue t-shirt design so that SM was in the middle and ST on the left? I like the idea of using the red banner logo from LnC for part of it.

Alternatively, what would it look like to just use SM fonts? Smallville, SM-the movie, and Man of Steel for the top and LnC banner for the bottom, or vice versa.

Great to see it coming together...I really like all the font options--and using the L&C banner looks really great on a shirt

Thanks, guys, for all the work on this. What a neat keepsake!

Laura

BTW--I really like how Sara included the website address and the fundraiser date--really personalizes it...but then again, I guess it potentially limits fans from other fandoms being interested?

Ideally, we'd like to have the website on there as a reminder of what it's for. Depending on the design, it could be a bit smaller, but would still need to be within the general printing area, given the constraints of the websites (teespring.com or CafePress's http://www.tfund.com/).

I definitely like the handwriting font idea! I'm not sure how I feel about the mixture of all the fonts, though I do like the idea behind it. I agree that the L&C banner does look pretty slick.

Sara

Thanks for all the comments.

I actually agree with both these statements. One of the reasons I did the 'multi' fandom font version was so that it would appeal to more people. If we put on our specific details then this goes and limits appeal again.

BUT it is OUR fundraiser so actually, we do want to promote that. I completely get that.

Anyway. If you want me to continue with some ideas just let me know. I'll work to include comments and suggestions, but we will need to choose what direction to go in.

Should I start a new thread with some poll options?

A poll could be a good idea...

Yeah, see--I personally like the shirt a lot better with the website and the year. It makes it a lot more specific to our fandom, and I like that ...but, if the design is also aimed towards other fans in other fandoms--I can see it limiting things.

I guess the question is, how important is it to gain that monetary amount from other fans of other shows?

I like it as specific to L&C as we can get...if that doesn't hurt our fundraising. And if we are going to include the website, and the fundraiser date, maybe we make the slogan that much more 'L&C looking?'

Thanks KatherineKent--any ideas for the shirt that you have, I'd be thrilled to see

Laura

I agree it's most important to appeal to us LnC message board fans. If others like our "slogan" then they can advertise our website.

To keep it super looking, what about doing the first line in the Red/Yellow Superman lettering (that KK suggested), and the second line in the red LnC logo box. Then have the website (which it never hurts to advertise. ) and the Fundraiser line in yellow, as KSaraSara suggested, but perhaps in smaller font? I like the idea of a blue shirt. I, personally, am more likely to wear blue than white. If we were to put the logo on a white shirt, I'd recommend changing the website and fundraiser info to super blue.

Now, we'd buy these directly from that CafePress fundraiser website and not through the other direct link (i.e. paypal) set up for donations, right? That is when everything is set up, which it's not since we're still picking lettering.

There is a problem with having dates on the shirt, namely that in a few years the shirt will become, well, dated. If someone were going to wear the shirt only for certain occasions (e.g., for fan conventions), the shirt might remain in good condition for several years.

Having said that, I hasten to add that my own opinion here shouldn't matter, since I plan to try bidding on an auction or two and if (as I suspect) I am outbid, then just giving a straight-forward donation to the site; I don't plan to buy any swag. I'm only throwing this out here because I suspect that putting dates on the shirt might limit the number of people who will decide to get them.

Joy,
Lynn

Posted a poll to get started.

Yes, that's right. This will be purchased directly from the specific t-shirt fundraiser site that we choose. Once we get a design nailed down, we can discuss what to price things at. The thing with the fundraiser sites is that you have to set a minimum goal to hit, so we should probably try to get a good idea of how many people will buy a t-shirt so that we can optimize our earnings.

Sara