Kickstarter

Well first of all - may day was a lot of fun. We spent most of April frantically trying to get materials out accross the country and throughout NYC, and on May Day we got to just enjoy the crowds.  Occuprint had a nice workshop as part of the Free University in Madison Square Park, and then the following week, we also led another workshop/discussion at the CUNY Graduate Center's James Gallery - part of the CUNY GC GA's Transforming Assemblies project.

Now - we're going to spend the next two weeks getting all our kickstarter rewards mailed and out portfolio finished. Tomorrow is our first big work day - so hopefully most if not all of our packages will go out then. (we already ordered 8 huge boxes of shipping supplies - they're waiting for us at interference archive!)

Next week we will start collating the portfolio.  We're just waiting on five prints to get shipped by their printers - the other 26 prints are already sitting in nice neat piles at Booklyn, waiting for us to come and collate. 

A few important things:

1.if anyone out there wants to lend a hand - either tomorrow for our shipping/packing party or next week for portfolio collating - please get in touch!! occuprint@gmail.com - (people who come help collate will likely end up going home with a couple extra prints...)

2. If you live in NY and want to pick up your reward from the Interference Archive that would be amazing - and would save us some postage.  also email if this is possible.

thanks everyone -- for being patient with us ---  you should all get your stuff in the next few weeks - honest!

love,

occuprint

Hi Kickstarter Friends!!!  Sorry we're not sending more updates...  but here's a little news:

We've printed a ton of May Day materials -- thanks to all your support - and are now in the process of distributing them. We've done three rounds of shipments to cities across the country - ($1500 worth!!!) - big boxes of Strike! tabloids and tubes filled with posters and stickers.  We gave out a lot of materials at the Spring Awakening event in Central Park last weekend, and this week we've been getting lots of drop-ins at the interference archive, where everything is stored. People are really getting these things out into the world - its really exciting!

We're just about out of the first general strike posters - the Molly Crabapple and Josh Macphee images, and we've got a couple thousand of the third and fourth posters left - though we shouldn't have much trouble getting rid of them all before May 1 (except the ones we're saving for our donors of course!). Tomorrow we get our last May day/first summer poster back from the printer - image is attached below - it was created by an artist in Portland, Nina Montenegro - and we printed it extra large: 24 x 36. Basically, everyone who selected the "one of everything" rewards is going to be making out really really well.... 

After may day we're going to focus on finishing the portfolio - there are 11 prints left waiting to either be printed or shipped from their printer back to NY - and sending out the kickstarter rewards.  First we'll send out all the rewards that don't involve portfolio prints, and then second will do the rewards that involve prints. 

After that, we're going to shift focus to some educational projects we've got in the works - to keep us busy for the summer.

Tomorrow I'm going to print two of the portfolio prints with the help of some students of mine from brooklyn college - and CUNY TV is sending a film crew out to video us for a segment on their show "Study with the Best".  So much happening!!!

ok more soon.

much love from the whole occuprint team!!

jesse

Hi backers!!  We haven't forgotten about you - just been hard at work getting ready for May Day -- we hope to get our broadsheet off to the printer this weekend, and then another set of two posters shortly thereafter.  The broadsheet will have 4 posters and then a collection of texts about strikes that we've been putting together on the backs of the posters.  We've also got 50,000 stickers en route - they should arrive early next week - so if all goes according to plan we'll be shipping boxes of all this material to activists around the country in under a week!

We're starting to get everything set up for our kickstarter fullfillment - ordering shipping supplies, etc -- and we'll start to get those out in batches starting towards the end of the month.

The portfolio is also going well - we have about 14 images finished and in house, ready to be trimmed and colated.  The others are either en route or still waiting for their printers to print them....   I'm actually going to print the final three prints with Kristine Virsis on April 20th, assisted by some of my Brooklyn college students who want to learn about the process.

So that's our status.  Below are a few of the poster images we're considering for the broadsheet and the next round of posters.  If you have strong opinions about which ones you like best, let us know!!

we'll try to keep the updates coming so you know where things are at -- sorry for the long silence!

jesse

Things are heating up at Occuprint -- you saw the first two May Day posters that we printed in the last updates - 8,000 posters are already distributed and out into the world: Detroit, Chicago, New Haven, Boston...  and Union Square! Things are heating up again in NY, and we're ready to be part of the party. 

We've initiated a collaborative design process (so far about 15 people have plugged in) at the Interference Archive, and some exciting things are brewing - we've got designs in the works for matchbooks (general strike - how could we resist?), stickers, coasters, and of course posters, lots of posters.  As you see - we want to do a lot more than the 4 publications listed in our initial project description -- and so long as we raise a little bit more money, we should be able to.

We've also been hard at work collecting text for our May Day publication - a newspaper with four full page posters, and on the flip side, historic texts that offer first person accounts of being involved with general strikes and other related actions. We've got budgeted enough to print 30,000 copies - but we're really hoping that we can get some more donations in the last two days of our campaign - so we can push the number up to 100K!!!

Other important news: we've found free storage space - which is important when you're printing this much material.

Also, Occuprint has been nominated for the Curry Stone Design Prize - we are going to have an interview with members of the jury on Monday - wish us luck!

So that's our update for now... please do consider sharing info about our kickstarter with any friends that you think might be interested -- we're really hoping to get one last burst of cash so we can scale up all of our dreams and make things happen big time!!

see you on the streets!