Logo, and other plans

[Sanvean]

This is pretty much what I'm planning. If people want to do other stuff as well, cool by me.

I talked to a fellow who was recommended to me about doing a new version of the logo that would scale better for t-shirts, webstuff, etc. He did the Shadows of Isildur advertisements, if you've seen those on TopMUDsites. I'm going to have him go ahead and do one, which runs $125, which I'll kick in for now.

Once we have the logo, we can look at raising some money for the DragonCon flyers. I'd like to make these dual purpose - so they can be passed out at the con, and so people who are interested can take a few to post in their local gaming shops or bookstores. I was thinking about getting a set of Armageddon temporary tattoos made and either selling those or offering them to people willing to kick in for the flyer fundraising effort. Pushing the Amazon.com store at this point and using the proceeds wuld be good as well, if a couple of volunteers would be willing to gather people's suggestions and come up with a list.

At the con, (or earlier, I'm not sure), I'd like to have a raffle, to which people can donate prizes that seem suitably Zalanthan - perhaps donate a t-shirt off Cafe Press, a Baobab doll, etc. If I can work out the logistics and we do the Armageddon label wine as well, a couple of those bottles can go into the raffle while the rest get sold for whatever seems reasonable in order to raise more funds. I'd like to put this money toward  professionally revamping the website and continuing to create flyers that people can post locally.

Right now, our costs, which come out of the pockets of Nessalin, Brixius, and myself, plus 10-25 dollars a quarter from the Amazon site, are:

bandwidth cost
domain registration (Zalanthas and Armageddon)
300/year for TopMUDSite advertising
25-50/year other advertising as it presents itself (Brody's mud listing, metafilter ad, etc)
hosting for Zalanthas through Dreamhost
new equipment as needed (a number of other staff contributed last time we needed new equipment as well, but I don't have the names)

[Bestatte]

If anyone has skill with henna tattoos, that would also be a terrific way to earn funds for bandwidth, advertising, etc. You could set up a section of the table just for the purpose and do Zalanthanesque designs, like caste tattooes and bardic circle tattooes and even things like pymlithe blossoms and kanks.

If you charged between $3 and $20 per tattoo and kicked a buck into the fund for each one, you could do pretty nicely as the artist, and contribute to the fund at the same time.

I do henna but I suck at it, so it's just an idea for someone who can draw a straight line.

[Delirium]

I rock at henna tattoos. Once I'm sure whether or not I can make the con, I'd gladly volunteer. ;)

[Bestatte]

Delirium, if you can go, and I end up not being able to go, I'll mail you some amazing henna I picked up from an importer who got it from um.. Madagascar I think. The stuff is the shit, stays dark for a full week before it starts to fade, sets into the skin within minutes, and isn't the "black henna" that's got poison in it. It's just really excellent stuff from a good crop of plants and harvested properly I guess. I've tried the Mendi stuff - meh. Tried a few other brand-names - meh. Tried a couple of obscure brands that only Indian women would know about, not too meh, but still meh. This stuff though is amazing.

[crymerci]

I'd be more than happy to collect player suggestions for books, for the Amazon.com store.  I can start a thread in ooc (or go back and look for old ones), and collect the responses into one place.  I can also, if it's helpful, look up all the books on Amazon and find links for them.  Not sure how it works when you're on the selling end.

[Rindan]

I think the greatest barrier Armageddon suffers when it comes to money is simply that there is no easy an obvious way to donate.  If there was a pay pale link at the bottom of the main page for donation, I imagine you could probably rake in few more bucks.

[Sanvean]

Well, there is a donation link through Amazon here: http://www.zalanthas.org/ArmDocs/Community/donation.html but they take a hefty chunk, which I'd like to avoid.

I have a paypal account with spezzatura@hotmail.com which people are welcome to use but please put something like ARMAGEDDON DONATION in the subject line so I know to put that money aside separately and not go spend it on hookers and blow. If people want to do that, I can start a page with figures for what's been raised. Should there be something like a contributor's page that acknowledges people who donate?

[Callisto]

Is it going to be a NEW logo, or just a modified version of the current one?

If you're just going to mod the current one, you might want to hold off on shelling out the bucks. A friend and I have been working on a new logo design for an Armageddon desktop wallpaper that could easily be modified to be a flyer or fit onto a T-shirt.

It's the same Armageddon logo, just modeled to be more attractive. It would look great on a black or tan T-shirt, too. It shouldn't take more then another day or two to finish, assuming neither of us die horrible, horrible deaths and I hear back from Priestess soon (hint hint).

It isn't a newbie job either, he does this kind of thing for a living.

Just something to keep in mind.

[Sanvean]

I was thinking a cleaned up version of the old logo. Any news on this? If not, I'm going to go ahead and talk to the other guy. I'd feel more comfortable working with someone who's getting paid since that way we can be more demanding than if imposing on someone else's good will.