Star Army

Star ArmyⓇ is a landmark of forum roleplaying. Opened in 2002, Star Army is like an internet clubhouse for people who love roleplaying, art, and worldbuilding. Anyone 18 or older may join for free. New members are welcome! Use the "Register" button below.

Note: This is a play-by-post RPG site. If you're looking for the tabletop miniatures wargame "5150: Star Army" instead, see Two Hour Wargames.

  • If you were supposed to get an email from the forum but didn't (e.g. to verify your account for registration), email Wes at [email protected] or talk to me on Discord for help. Sometimes the server hits our limit of emails we can send per hour.
  • Get in our Discord chat! Discord.gg/stararmy

ADVERTISMENT CONTEST

Alright, so here's the deal: Star Army is currently going through the summer slump that all online RPGs go through every year. There are too few RP posts each day and several of the plots have died. Since the 4chan ads have ceased, the influx of new players has slowed to nothingness. The players who stuck around are excellent, but I feel it's time to expand this circle of friends, or at least make up for the roleplayers lost over the inevitable real-life schedule conflicts and such. We're doing well, but I think we could do better.

What we need is some new players. I'm going to be shelling out some serious cash for advertising, but it's not going to work if the forums aren't active and inviting. So, what I need is for everyone to be on their game, keeping their plots running strong. Take pride in your plot ship!

As part of my strategy, I not only intend to advertise on the web, but also in person and through flyers. That's where you come in. Show off your skills, creativity, and advertising sense by coming up with a page-size advertisement for the Star Army RP. It needs to be eye-catching, easily readable, and informative. You can use any of the artwork on the site for the poster, or your own. Upload the poster to starchan and post it in this thread. You can submit as many as you want.

Saturday, July 15th, will be the deadline for these posters (as far as the contest is concerned). At that point, I'll make a poll topic and we'll vote on which one we think will bring in the most quality roleplayers.

Once we have chosen the winner(s), I'm going to make hundreds (thousands?) of copies and distribute it at various science fiction, anime, and gaming conventions in my area (depending on which I can get to). I'd ask other Star Army members to do the same for their areas. Remember, these will probably be black and white copies, so keep that in mind when designing the poster.

Please respond to this topic. Let's discuss what would be ideal information to put on the ads--For starters, they'll need the StarArmy.com URL and a little copyright notice in the corner, and preferably at least one picture.
 
https://stararmy.com/starchan/humor/src/ ... 402191.png
https://stararmy.com/starchan/humor/src/ ... 429635.png

The first one, I don't like so much. I got distracted some while making it, and kind of veered off course, making it not turn out as good as I would have hoped. It's not very suitable for recruiting new members to the site, I don't think.

The second one, I like much better. The large empty space can be used to put anything in, and I was drawing a total blank on what to put in there, so if there's anything you'd especially like it to say, I can put it in there, Wes. Like the first one, I don't think that it turned out as well as it could have, but I'm very tired.

I used the new Hanako for both, mostly because all of the other characters in the gallery have a black background, which was too much of a hassle for my lazy self to work with.

I can provide both .psd files if they are needed for any reason. Both are 7x10".
 
I like the message transmitted by Raz's first flyer. It could serve as a Star Army recruitment poster ICly, really! I also fills most of the sheet with elements that both hint at content and activity.

The second isn't bad, but I feel there's a good part of it that's being put to waste and the weighting of information is uneven on the page. I'd also try choosing a text excerpt that could be more evocative (and not have mistakes in the text ~_^).
 
They're both really good; I'm sure we could fill the space with information on the website, the date of a Star Army get-together, or perhaps a schedule for whatever convention/event we're distributing it at.

These posters are getting better and better! Again, though, the files are kind of small-sized for printing. ^_^;

And by the way, you can just put ©2006 StarArmy.com instead of my name. I kind of like to think it's the community's property as much as my own; I'm just the manager. ^_^
 
For easier transition for Wes' sake, it'd be better if the people working on the flyers made 8.5x11 sized pictures at 200 to 300 dpi. It's typically what's used in the industry if you don't need to go to a professional printer firm to make movie posters and the like.
 
Also, careful with the margins.

Here's some bigger logos: (gif) (png)
 
https://stararmy.com/starchan/humor/src/ ... 173634.png

If there's an RP excerpt you'd like to see more, tell me (I kind of picked that one at random). I did the text mostly as a filler, I don't know how accurate it is, or how professional it reads (I'm not a professional advertising guy, after all). I've uploaded the .psd to starchan (albeit by accident), so if it doesn't print the proper size from the .png, save the .psd version and print it from photoshop.
 
Er, variety is misspelled. I'd move the third bullet before the first one too. Otherwise, looking great!
 
The first thing that jumped at me when I looked at it was the thought: "Too much text!"

Which brings me to the next question: just what is the goal of these flyers: to provide a lot of information or merely to pique interest but be noticable?
 
Raz said:
Fixed: https://stararmy.com/starchan/humor/src/ ... 709530.png

If you could delete the incorrect ones, that'd be nice. I forgot to set a password for deletion on them.
It'll automatically do it. Just click the box of your post and hit the delete button.

Kotori said:
The first thing that jumped at me when I looked at it was the thought: "Too much text!"

Which brings me to the next question: just what is the goal of these flyers: to provide a lot of information or merely to pique interest but be noticable?
They are supposed to be both noticable (to stand out in a crowd of other fliers) and informative (we're not branding here).
 
Kotori said:
The first thing that jumped at me when I looked at it was the thought: "Too much text!"

Which brings me to the next question: just what is the goal of these flyers: to provide a lot of information or merely to pique interest but be noticable?

I was also having this problem with my work. The text seems a little overbearing, but without it, all it would say is "Star Army of Yamatai" and "www.stararmy.com - quality space role-play since 2000" with maybe a quote or somesuch.

I can try to take a minimalist approach if I do another one.
 
Make sure the URL is HUGE and BOLD, as it is vital.
 
I'm still trying to help James get his Colosseum plot going, which would have a good amount of space for other players, I think. But I haven't seen him around lately, so something may have to be worked out regarding that...

A contest? With a thumb drive as a possible prize? Hmm...*starts brainstorming*
 
I need the flyers that are image files to be 8 by 10.5 inches in actual dimensions (change the resolution). I tried to print one earlier and it wouldn't fit on a page, and this computer/printer couldn't resize it.
 
Wes, have you tried importing the image into Word? It's easier to resize it then, although you may end up with fuzzy images if the starting image is too small.
 
I assume you have photoshop, Wes. If you need any of the ones I made in .psd format so that they print the correct size (and they do, I tested it), I can provide this.
 
All I have while I'm at work is Internet Explorer. >,< My home printer isn't aligning stuff properly, so it can't print anything worth a damn.
 
That's too bad. This is the closest I can get to the size of an IE print job without going over the margins. You probably won't get the best print formatting results out of IE, but if that's all you've got, I suppose you'll have to make due.
 
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