Merchandizing for the GIMP.
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| Merchandizing for the GIMP. | Simon Budig | 08 Jun 16:32 |
| Merchandizing for the GIMP. | Sven Neumann | 09 Jun 19:17 |
| Merchandizing for the GIMP. | Alexandre Prokoudine | 09 Jun 19:27 |
| Merchandizing for the GIMP. | Alexia Death | 09 Jun 19:43 |
| Merchandizing for the GIMP. | gg@catking.net | 10 Jun 00:22 |
| Merchandizing for the GIMP. | Alexandre Prokoudine | 10 Jun 00:28 |
| Merchandizing for the GIMP. | Michael Natterer | 10 Jun 09:17 |
| Merchandizing for the GIMP. | Christopher Curtis | 10 Jun 04:17 |
| Merchandizing for the GIMP. | Michael Schumacher | 09 Jun 20:10 |
Merchandizing for the GIMP.
Hi all.
At LGM we threw some ideas around for Gimp-Merchandizing.
I am a little bit involved in this, since the company I work for - kernel concepts - has a lot of experience with doing these things for various free software projects. I am usually the person, preparing artwork provided by the projects into something suitable for the product in question.
While I am convinced that we do a good work there and I'd very much welcome doing stuff for the GIMP please understand that I want to leave the selection of a partner for merchandizing stuff to you, by no means should my involvement with the GIMP imply in any way that GIMP should do the stuff with us.
Having said that, here are some ideas what we have done already and what could be explored. Also have a look at our shop, where some of the stuff we have is presented:
http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/product_info.php?cPath=22_30&products_id=75
Options:
- T-Shirts and hoodies. We prefer silk-screen printing for T-Shirts, which gives a great durability of the shirt. It might be possible to create special effects like e.g. night-glow paint or colors with glittering stuff in them. (we did this for some LinuxTag-T-Shirts, but this may have to be re-evaluated, since our printing-provider recently changed his color-source)
- Mugs. We prefer silk-screen printing for the mugs. The openstreetmap mugs we did some time ago are done in some sort of transfer-print, and it turned out that the quality is not as good as we expected. We also have done some frosted-glass mugs, which can be printed on in "clear".
- Pins. In fact we did a Gimp-Pin as the very first pin and grossly overestimated the "sellability" of a gimp pin. As a result we're now sitting on 100's of Gimp pins, which don't sell. So there might be an option for a special deal :)
They're silk-screen printed in 5 colors and beautiful. These are something I hand out frequently on community events, unfortunately I did forget them at this LGM.
- Stickers. We have a contact, who creates stickers with an epoxy cover, pretty much as you know them from PC case stickers. They are not cheap but can be manufactured in small quantities and can be arbitrarily shaped.
"Regular" stickers for distributing are something we still need to evaluate a bit. We once created a set of custom shaped linux penguins: http://shop.kernelconcepts.de/images/tux_aufkleberbogen.png
However, creating a custom shape for "mass-printing" stickers is expensive. It might be possible to ask for a "standard" layout of a page full of stickers. We did not do this yet, but it should be fairly easy to figure this out.
- Keyrings and other small stuff: the guy creating the epoxy-stickers also offers products, which provide a place for the epoxy stickers.
Some of you know the key rings with a shopping-basket-chip I handed out to some people. This kind of stuff. This could be an interesting option, since there is no setup cost and manufacturing can happen in fairly small quantities.
- Pens. For the FSFE we did a pen with "analog printer" printed on it. I wonder if it would make sense to have "real world" brushes and/or pencils with some reference to GIMP on it.
- Ties. Michael keeps asking for them. We once did a Tie with the BSD-Daemon on it. They're not cheap, minimum order is about 40, and I am not *that* happy with the quality, they feel a little bit weird.
- We also evaluated pins with blinking LEDs on them. Unfortunately we tend to care about regulations in Germany and when confronted with the requirements for the "Elektro- und Elektronikgerätegesetz" our supplier promptly retracted his initial offer, remarking "oh, you're the first one to ask for this"...
Please feel free to continue the brainstorm. We're not scared of new challenges :)
Tomorrow LinuxTag is starting again in Berlin and kernel concepts again manages the merchandizing booth there. Feel free to drop by (I'll be there on Friday and Saturday) and evaluate stuff.
Bye, Simon
Merchandizing for the GIMP.
On Tue, 2010-06-08 at 16:32 +0200, Simon Budig wrote:
Hi all.
At LGM we threw some ideas around for Gimp-Merchandizing.
Since I haven't been at LGM, I have trouble to understand the motivation for doing GIMP merchandising.
You are certainly not doing this for the money, are you? We have a steady flow of donations coming in and basically nothing to spend this money for.
Perhaps someone can explain why the GIMP developers should even care about merchandising. There are other parties who are interested to do GIMP merchandising (freewear.org for example) and willing to organize all of it. This failed because we aren't even capable of adding a link to their products on the gimp.org web-site. What makes you think that it would work better if we did this all by our-selves?
Sven
Merchandizing for the GIMP.
On 6/9/10, Sven Neumann wrote:
Perhaps someone can explain why the GIMP developers should even care about merchandising. There are other parties who are interested to do GIMP merchandising (freewear.org for example) and willing to organize all of it. This failed because we aren't even capable of adding a link to their products on the gimp.org web-site. What makes you think that it would work better if we did this all by our-selves?
One of the things discussed at LGM was moving all project's domain and subdomains to a single dedicated server. We have a person willing to do the migration and a person to create a new website.
Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org
Merchandizing for the GIMP.
On Wednesday, June 09, 2010 20:19:03 Sven Neumann wrote:
On Tue, 2010-06-08 at 16:32 +0200, Simon Budig wrote:
Hi all.
At LGM we threw some ideas around for Gimp-Merchandizing.
Since I haven't been at LGM, I have trouble to understand the motivation for doing GIMP merchandising.
IT was discussed and two reasons dominated.
a) Promotion material for the fun of it. Cheap giveaways, like Wilber stickers you can give away at local meets for fans to show their love for gimp. It boosts the fun index of the project sky high. Heck, I wish *I* had some to stick on my laptop lid. When I finally get a decent printer I might print some paper ones but... Real stuff would be way cooler.
b) Something a little bit better as a token of appreciation. Google gives the GSOC students shirts... It would be rally nice if we could give them a nice little mug with Wilber on or something.
And If someone wants to buy the items, that should ye,s be an option too but it wasn't really the aim.
You are certainly not doing this for the money, are you? We have a steady flow of donations coming in and basically nothing to spend this money for.
This was proposed as a way to do something with the money that would be fun.
Perhaps someone can explain why the GIMP developers should even care about merchandising.
Im speaking for myself here I guess, but Id like to have something to show off what I do as a hobby ... and spread the Wilber love around.
-- Alexia
Merchandizing for the GIMP.
On 09.06.2010 19:19, Sven Neumann wrote:
On Tue, 2010-06-08 at 16:32 +0200, Simon Budig wrote:
Hi all.
At LGM we threw some ideas around for Gimp-Merchandizing.
Since I haven't been at LGM, I have trouble to understand the motivation for doing GIMP merchandising.
You are certainly not doing this for the money, are you?
Please note that Simon is responding to my request from the GIMP meeting to present an overview of merchandise items in the categories "give-away bulk", "give-away specific", "standard merchandise" and "surprises" (like the ties).
Do you remember the - not terribly serious - short discussion we had about this at your place during last congress? That was the much more serious continuation.
We've been very careful to leave this at a "present the options, decide later" stage - mostly because many of the GIMP developer's haven't been able to attend LGM. But everyone agreed that we want stickers, at least.
Regards, Michael
Merchandizing for the GIMP.
On 09/06/10 19:43, Alexia Death wrote:
On Wednesday, June 09, 2010 20:19:03 Sven Neumann wrote:
On Tue, 2010-06-08 at 16:32 +0200, Simon Budig wrote:
Hi all.
At LGM we threw some ideas around for Gimp-Merchandizing.
Since I haven't been at LGM, I have trouble to understand the motivation for doing GIMP merchandising.
IT was discussed and two reasons dominated.
a) Promotion material for the fun of it. Cheap giveaways, like Wilber stickers you can give away at local meets for fans to show their love for gimp. It boosts the fun index of the project sky high. Heck, I wish *I* had some to stick on my laptop lid. When I finally get a decent printer I might print some paper ones but... Real stuff would be way cooler.
Yeah! I have a wilber sticker! Woot, Cool , loads of fun. My life just seemed empty before , how did I live? Yeeha! WOOT again, merchandising is FUN!
b) Something a little bit better as a token of appreciation. Google gives the GSOC students shirts... It would be rally nice if we could give them a nice little mug with Wilber on or something.
And If someone wants to buy the items, that should ye,s be an option too but it wasn't really the aim.
You are certainly not doing this for the money, are you? We have a steady flow of donations coming in and basically nothing to spend this money for.
This was proposed as a way to do something with the money that would be fun.
Merchandising is usually a way of MAKE money not spending it. Paying for everyone to go out for a few beers sounds more like fun.
Perhaps someone can explain why the GIMP developers should even care about merchandising.
Im speaking for myself here I guess, but Id like to have something to show off what I do as a hobby ... and spread the Wilber love around.
What, you print mugs for a hobby , cool!
There seems to be something fundamentally disingenuous in all this merchandising bullshit.
I would have thought the best was to promote GIMP, if that needs to be done , is to show off what can be done with the software, not printing mugs , tee-shirts and balloons.
I don't think gilbert is particularly good example of what can be done with GIMP and I find this silly mascot rather demeaning and irrelevant. Hardly the focal point of the project.
I recall seeing some really impressive computer art that was done with blender. Real art, like as in paintings, not just pulling ellipses and triangles around. It was hard to believe it was done with a computer.
It would be more inspiring and more of an accolade to GIMP to show some really top class work created with it rather poncing around with a gimp flavoured handbag and a sticker on your forehead.
Perhaps any promotional effort should be made to relate to the project.
Merchandizing for the GIMP.
On 6/10/10, gg wrote:
I don't think gilbert is particularly good example of what can be done with GIMP and I find this silly mascot rather demeaning and irrelevant.
His name is Wilber and he says he loves you anyway.
Alexandre Prokoudine http://libregraphicsworld.org
Merchandizing for the GIMP.
On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Alexia Death wrote:
On Wednesday, June 09, 2010 20:19:03 Sven Neumann wrote:
Since I haven't been at LGM, I have trouble to understand the motivation for doing GIMP merchandising.
[...]
b) Something a little bit better as a token of appreciation. Google gives the
GSOC students shirts... It would be rally nice if we could give them a nice little mug with Wilber on or something.
I've always found T-shirts to be infinitely more useful than most of the other baubles I've received. However, I certainly like the idea of sending "Merged" shirts to GSoC participants, presuming the code gets merged. They could also be used as rewards if anyone wanted to assign bug-bounties to bugzilla entries. It would be nice if whatever design this "Merged" graphic would be also shows support for the efforts of translators and documentation writers.
Chris
Merchandizing for the GIMP.
On Thu, 2010-06-10 at 01:21 +0200, gg@catking.net wrote:
It would be more inspiring and more of an accolade to GIMP to show some really top class work created with it rather poncing around with a gimp flavoured handbag and a sticker on your forehead.
Get real, who wants handbags, we are talking about wilber ass tattoos and GIMP branded dildos!
Seriously, what bad crack did you smoke before writing that response. What harm does it do if somebody produces some GIMP stickers and mugs? Don't we have more important things to discuss here?
This is like the *typical* mailing list bullshit discussion. A complete irrelevant garbage topic where everybody feels like they can have a relevant opinion. I would wish for that kind of participation when it comes to really important issues.
(and no, I don't address you personally here gg in the last paragraph, only in the ones above)
annoyed regards, --mitch
