@{ CCN-Header
  Name:    CCN:AVP/avp-charter
  Summary: The charter of the Amiga Visibility Project
  Date:    93-09-23
}@

The Amiga Visibility Project (AVP)
Charter; last updated 93-09-23

Quick summary:

We need ways to make the Amiga more visible to people, especially in the
North American market where Commodore's advertising is VERY weak. I propose
to collect quality artwork to be used in the production of T-shirts, bumper
stickers, caps, pins, and mugs. This material will be passed on to Amiga
mail order suppliers for general availability. Submissions of artwork are
invited. I'll also be scanning and drawing some of my own.

Details:

When folks are out to select a personal computer, they're unlikely to
select a brand if they've never heard of it. They need the feeling that
they're not alone in their choice. Since Commodore can't afford to do
proper marketing (yet?) which would give the Amiga some visibility I
recommend that we attempt to provide Amiga visibility by some of the
cheapest and easiest advertising techniques known:

  - bumper stickers
  - T-shirts
  - caps
  - pins
  - mugs

This kind of modified word-of-mouth technique can raise Amiga awareness so
that when you profess to be an Amiga zealot people will quit saying things
like:

  "An Amiga, what's that?"
  "Amigas? Didn't they stop making them?"

and start saying things like:

  "That's interesting, what do you do with your Amiga?"
  "I've heard of those, are they expensive?"
  "Gee, a friend of mine owns one of those."
  "Isn't the Amiga a multi-media computer?"
  "I'm thinking of getting a CD^32 right now!"

By rights, Commodore ought to be helping us on this effort by centralizing
designs and selecting approved sellers of the goods, but alas they are not.
So we have to take up the slack and do a couple simple things.

  1) Locate one or more Amiga mail-order suppliers willing to develop
     the items in their stock

  2) Locate good artwork which can be donated to the cause.

  3) Publicize the availability of the goods.

I have already spoken to one supplier who has some of the required goods.
Unfortunately, the items don't have some of the kind of official-looking
artwork I was hoping for. However after speaking with one of their
management, they are willing to accept quality artwork and produce new
stock. They were specifically interested in making T-shirts, and they
already offer bumper stickers (free with each order), and mugs
(I "heart" my Amiga).

I propose we locate or create artwork with these qualities:

  - Contains relevant classic Amiga symbols: bouncing ball, checkmark,
    official Amiga font, perhaps all three!

  - Colorful and attention grabbing, perhaps containing
    3-dimensional objects.

  - Containing just enough text to convey that the Amiga is an exciting
    and capable personal computer.

  - MTV styles included. Remember, some future Amiga owners watch MTV
    and are alert to their advertising techniques.

  - Available in digital form for easy transport and use. High resolution
    ILBM, GIF, or postscript is appropriate. We'll be gaining some
    experience over time on this issue, but I feel we should try to make
    the material easily available.

We can easily support multiple designs to keep things fresh and get people
to buy new items periodically. Each medium potentially requires different
works, since their dimensions and viewing conditions are different. I
recognize these issues:

  T-shirt:
    - Large format requiring highest resolution imagery
    - Front and back available for two styles of message
    - Front can have large image, or a pocket area image
    - Back can have a large image or message

  Mug and Cap:
    - Small format, so resolution is not critical.

  Pins:
    - insanely small format
    - inexpensive medium

  Bumper sticker:
    - Uncommon small and wide format.
    - People spend a VERY short time looking at them so they must be
      readable at a significant distance.

Distribution:

I volunteer to be a central handler of the imagery and I'll pass them on
to suppliers in an effort to get a source of the items. Once I get
a few items, I'll place them on AmiNet for general access as well.
Some of us might want to somehow print the imagery and get our own items
made in small quantity for sale by Amiga Clubs as fund raising sources,
or at cost just for fun.

  Current sources:
  - In a short while, I'll place them for ftp on AmiNet. Please try
    to use this method to keep the load on my e-mail link down. Thanks.
  - Use an e-mail request sent to my automated e-mail server at the
    address "ccn@davinci.reading.ma.us". Send a message with the word
    help in the body for instructions. Send a message with this line
    in the body to get an index:    get ccn:index
    Get the index, and look for the "AVP" directory.
  - By BMS (the Amiga UUCP file service off the site davinci.reading.ma.us)

I'll also maintain a list of suppliers offering gear.

Copyrights and protection:

The authors of new material can maintain the copyright provided they
include a statement granting us free use. I'm open for suggestions in this
area as a "GNU-style" copyleft doesn't seem to work since we want to
offer the artwork for use by mail order vendors for profit (or does it?)

We're going to plow ahead in this area, hoping for a success immediately.
Please let me know if you have a good solution short of trying to convince
Commodore to take the ball on this.

@{ CCN-Sources

Ralph L. Vinciguerra
Opportunity With Learning - An Amiga educational software developer.
rlv@davinci.reading.ma.us

}@