[Fsfe-uk] LinuxExpo approaches...

[Alex Hudson]

According to our diary, we're about two months away. :eek:

We've talked off and on about doing a nice leaflet-y promo thingy for
handing to people, to attempt to push the organisation itself a bit more
than just the Free Software information. For those that haven't seen it,
have a look at the current one:

        http://www.affs.org.uk/documents/leaflet1.pdf   

It's a single-side A4 sheet in two columns. There are a number of
'problems' identified with this, though it has served us well. Firstly,
it's not the prettiest of leaflets. Second, it does contain some
information which was stale even by the time we did the last print
(we've known Brian wasn't going to be around for a while), although this
isn't really widespread and therefore not much of an issue.

On the bright side, it has been cheap to copy and distribute, and it may
well be that we just want to update this a little bit and continue to
have a 'cheap' leaflet. However, I think there is also space for a
little bit of gloss.

So, I've made an initial attempt at the business-side of a 2-fold A3
leaflet, a bit like the FSFE have. Obviously, we will be wanting to
out-do their leaflet :o)

        http://www.alexhudson.com/images/Leaflet-A3.pdf (81k)

Works for me in xpdf, but gnome-gv/ggv/gs appear to fall over hard. 

The idea is that we have a double-sided leaflet that is folded on the
fold marks (equal thirds). It's single-colour (i.e., blue and black),
because I'm fairly sure it would be cheaper to print than full colour.
I'd love to know what people think about this idea, in general, and
whether or not they think this line of design is worth persuing.

My personal feeling is that A3 is going to be a bit too big, I think -
you can stick an awful lot of information on them, A4 might be more
appropriate for us. A3 is also difficult to pocket. It's possible to
resize the above to A4 at the same ratio, so if you want to print it in
that format I'd be interested in how usable you think it is (I don't
have a printer, but suspect the font size is big enough to work at A4).

We need to think about the information that should go on this. Comparing
again to the FSFE leaflet, there is an awful lot of information on the
FSFE leaflet which is not FSFE-specific (i.e., it's about Free Software
in general). I think it would be appropriate, then, for AFFS to produce
something which was completely AFFS-oriented, and not attempt to
replicate this information. It may also be the case that we want to
include a small amount about other organisations in the UK who are doing
things we're interested in (e.g., AFSP? Neil?)

I would also be very interested in people who know good printers. The
idea with this would be that we print a fair amount to get a good
economy of scale, so we're probably talking a good few hundred if not a
thousand or so. I'm currently trying to investigate whether or not it
will be possible to produce the thing using wholly Free Software,
although I'm not majorly hopeful about that (you'll notice the bleed on
my PDF is worse than non-existant). This would be another thing to
discuss with the printer.

Cheers,

Alex.

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