1. Background

Public protests should show its messages clearly and protest banners have great visibility even in large crowds (in combination with telescope poles or ceiling support poles, eg in Sweden the BILTEMA store has a great selection, cf Art. 86-070) or on large buildings. Although re-using old cloth (e.g. old bedsheets) is eco-friendly, disadvantages are costs for cloth (often free though), paint, vulnerability to rain and wind, and worktime. Therefore, I designed my banners digitally and had them  professionally produced by a printing service as mesh banners, which are highly resilient to wind and rain, and can be re-used multiple times. With enough funding, a larger numbers of banners can be produced at low cost in a short time.

After hitting limitations of other general purpose office software (eg LibreImpress has a page size limit of 3 meters, GIMP and many other graphics programs do not support the CMYK colour model required by most printshops), I decided to use SCRIBUS (stable version 1.4.8 is recommend, no versions in development), which is a professional, open-source desktop-publishing software. Core features include support for the CMYK colour model and scalability to large projects. The CMYK colour model is important to make sure that the printed colours are as expected, since deviations from the on-screen RGB model may occur. Thereby, it allows you to use low-cost online printing services, e.g. flyeralarm.com, which accept only files with the CMYK colour model to ensure product quality.

In the following I make some basic instructions and the SCRIBUS and PDF files of the designed banners available below:

2. Quick Instructions

Note: You can skip steps 1 to 5 by using the banner templates (PDF format) available for download below.

1. Install XR fonts (FUXCED font)
   Download Fonts (including special Swedish characters): fucxedcapsregularswedish.ttf (ttf files, zipped)
2. Read Instructions from print service [General Instructions]
   Instructions for rectangular, landscape banner (3m x 1m): Flyeralarm_Instruktion_Banderoll_plane_100x300.pdf
3. Design poster (including bleed and safety distance)
   Note: Bleed does not work properly in SCRIBUS (or with the PDF Driver respectively), so I recommend overlaying frames to allow for the bleed and set the bleed in SCRIBUS to zero.
4. Export with CMYK color model to PDF with recommended resolution of 356dpi
5. Optional: Quick check colours with print of banner on a single A4 paper with your own colour printer
6. Upload to flyeralarm.se [Link to order of 3m x 1m banner on flyeralarm.se]
   Note1: Cost for 2 copies of 3m x 1m banner with eyelets about 500 SEK/50EUR (multiples of 2 copies are cheaper).
   Note2: You buy the banner first, and then upload the file using the upload link in the confirmation email.
   Note3: Cancelling the order, before it went into print was no problem.
   Note4: Alternative  online printshops which I can recommend: wir-machen-druck.de (Germany)
7. Delivery with UPS from Germany to Sweden was slightly annoying but the banners arrived after 2 to 3 weeks.

3 Downloads

Low Resolution Image (Preview):

Scribus Format: Banner_StopClimateBreakdown_V1.sla.zip [zip(sla)]

PDF format: Banner_StopClimateBreakdown_V1.pdf (ready-to-print, high-resolution, 300 dpi, CMYK color model, 65 MB)
Note: Colours of this PDF may look weird on screen using the RGB color model, because the print-ready PDF file uses the CMYK color model. If you don’t trust the PDF, print on a colour printer in A4 format and check.