For you, 108 protest signs for the fight. This is for Occupied D.C. Many signs are revised to sing. 🎶. I recommend using a local printer, but national print companies offer great pricing, shipping included. There is time to get the lot printed for your protest group, assuming you have a gathering of 300 to 1,000. This would help fill the hands of the signless.
https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/protest-sign-sign-everywhere-a-sign
08/14/25, 9:00 pm - DAPHNE, AL, USA
Sign, sign
Everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery
Breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that
Can't you read the sign?
Sign, Five Man Electrical Band, 1970
Mom used to call out, “Pancakes! Two for a nickel. Three for a dime!” That was as she flipped hotcakes for Dad and her 5 kids! I am flipping out signs faster than her hotcakes came off the griddle. (I have 108 for you in this batch.)
The best buy in Mom’s pancakes was 2 for a nickel. I don’t think 3 ever went out for a dime. I mean, you could get 4 for 2 nickels. Who would buy 3 for a dime? She really did not charge us, it was just her traditional call out saying a pancake breakfast was ready. That was instead of the usual call out “Belly up to the table.” Mom’s call out caught ears scattered all over the house. For pancakes, the 6 of us were at the table in 2 seconds flat.
As signs go, however, you need a good call out that blows them away. Like Mom’s! You get only 2 seconds to catch a reader’s eye. That is it: 2 SECONDS—if that!
This sign’s call out “Outlaw!” begs a question. Outlaw what? Of the 1 million things we should outlaw, the 2 bullets are contemporaneous HotButtons. “Outlaw!” draws you into reading the 2 bullets, the rest of the sign.
Fast-moving people will not stop and read your sign—unless you catch their eye. Failing that, the reader will quickly move on to the next sign—can I say “in the blink of an eye”?
The job of catching the readers’ eyes is assigned to the “lede”. That is the sole job of the lede. What is the lede? “Outlaw!” was the lede for my sign above. It is the heading, a short summary statement.
The printing world calls it the lede to distinguish it from lead. “Lead” is a verb, an adjective, and a noun. Lead as a noun is a metal long used by printers. Lede distinguishes the meaning in the printshop.
Why is the lede important? A good lede hooks the eyes.
Consider this. We have protests in the street, and we must bring the administration to a halt. A clear way to stop everything is to stop spending. Boycott everything. $ave. My lede for that thought is here:
A boycott is a way to throttle the administration. Hunker down.
It may well be advisable to save your funds for the carnage about to unfold. Doing so will do a lot to kick the crooks to the curb. Boycott!
Jessica Craven’s plan for us to stave off bloodshed is to boycott (stop buying) Texas beef. Texas & Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association Political Action Committee (TSCRA PAC) is the largest Republican donor from Texas! Buy local beef, Jessica says, if you must. Beans are the perfect substitute, as the sign indicates.
Continuous Improvement. My sign file has been improved. Please understand (I am never satisfied, and I never stop tweaking. Did I mention OCD. The response from all of you toward these signs has far exceeded my expectations. My last post of these 100 signs garnered:
7,400 readers checking in
170 likes
80 shares-restacks
120 new free subscribers
1 new paid subscriber
All from this one, single post. I am delighted in all of that. I am growing an increasingly distributed, worldwide following from way down here in Daphne, AL—on Mobile Bay. Daphne is not exactly a hotbed of resistance activity, a writing enclave, or home to bards, but my blue dinghy in this deep red ocean is afloat.
I got just 1 paid subscriber, Sam Holmgren, from this post, and that perplexed me a little until I considered that free signs means free signs. I have to laugh at myself, as I do all of the time. (Thank you, Mr. Sam Holmgren for the paid subscription as I was writing this.) Jess Craven said her subscribers have fallen off. I don’t have time to reflect on what is afoot with my and her experience, but I see the effects of the tariffs coming into play. Indeed, I myself recommend hunkering down! Stop spending. It will sort itself out.
I have more important considerations to sort out. No one recognized my joke in my last post, when I said the last sign in the stack was Mine. Mine! I thought it a good Dad joke.
This truly is my sign. I could see carrying this at a protest! A little levity in a throng of rants.
Should I be selling these signs 2 for a nickel and 3 for a dime, instead of flat-out giving the intellectual property away? Not in a heartbeat. My efforts are throttled by my OCD, and when the mental-petal hits the metal, I have to let her rip. You get “sign sign everywhere a sign”.
My mission is to marshal and supply an army of protesters with signs they can use, signs that are readable at distance, signs that express emotionally the dissent! So, I went back to work on my mission: arming protestors with good signs!!!
Good Trouble, Right Now. This will not be a battle without bloodshed. Eyes wide open! Be emboldened because ours is such a just cause, a matter of much higher ideal and critical importance. We will not bring violence. We will bring constant and consistent…
Now we must make this good trouble like this sign says. We must create good change—through good trouble.
Defeating the Supreme Court. We are all disgusted by sleazy actions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Subterfuge to empower an authoritarian has not gone unnoticed, and now the Supreme Court radical majority knows its gig is up. They will get worse before we take the hammer to them. We must take them on and defeat them.
Women have been given short shrift, the worst of misogyny since the U.S. Constitution was written. I made this sign for them, but remember, I get paid more for my labor.
Printing Signs. I looked at printing solutions with an eye toward the cheapest way to get a professional print job. FastSigns is a source for printing nationwide. SignsOnTheCheap.com in Austin and JustYardSigns.com in Orlando are recommended. Send one of my files to get their quote. They have all quoted me so they are familiar with the files and the need.
A batch of 108 is good to garner some discount, 5 batches will get their attention. Networking has benefits. If only wanting a few or one, tell them which to print, rather than struggling with the file. Just send the whole file.
Let me suggest having a sign printer do all 108 signs to outfit your protest group with screamingly great signs in 24x18-inch size.
I had 2 signs printed in large size, 36x24-inch. The impact was just mind boggling. Check this out. DEMANDS!
On the right, my larger size “Demands!” was too big, but had huge impact. It drowned out all other signs. You may want to do that!
Another solution (looking to economy) says to key on the most ubiquitous sign printed today, i.e., the cheapest good sign. You have seen this sign all over. That is the 24x18-inch real estate or political yard sign in 4mm Coroplast.
And the meaning below of this 3-word protest sign will grow in importance as our platform is put together. These 3 words may well be a platform plank.
Reading this without saying “Medicare for all period”? I FIND THAT HARD TO DO! I just increased the size of the period because some did not get it.
Please understand as I said, I am never satisfied and never stop tweaking anything. Did I mention OCD.
I have redone most all of the signs in my previous file to make these signs scream louder. I have increased the number of signs. I increased the type size of many ledes. I deleted many words—simplifying the message to get to a larger type size. These 108 are better signs at this moment than any other signs my readers currently have! But in a week or so, I’ll be back.
And at protests, yell like hell, as Jackson Browne sang, til you go down. Yes, take to the streets.
Thank you for reading, sharing, subscribing, and protesting. I’m grateful to everyone who sponsors me. Thank all of you for finding my voice. You have given that place and meaning, and I love y’all for that.
Please become a paid subscriber if you can. New signs plus updates/improvements will be in my subsequent postings. Subscribe to get the newer, better signs.
My security detail is vigilant and on duty 24/7. Dental treats are going up, but keeping her teeth white (and sharp) saves on dental bills later.
Nala is our son’s registered shepherd and certified service animal. She uses her ears for me.
Nala is learning to spell. We cannot say or spell out “red dot” without activating her. 🔴
She lives to chase that red dot. 🔴 We do not need a gun. We simply put the red dot on the intruder. 🔴 We will get a cat soon for backup.
I am going now to find a blue dot 🔵 laser pointer. As Arnold says, “I’ll be Bach!”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.