I’m working on some poster preparation for the upcoming National Council on Family Relations conference, and I’m trying something new. As a first-year faculty member and second year PhD student, I’m always looking for ways to preserve my precious professional development money. I’ve seen several blog posts and tweets about printing posters on fabric at Spoonflower. Typically, printing my 3×4 foot conference posters costs me around $65 at FedEx Office (and that’s with a COUPON) and then I have to deal with that wretched poster tube on the plane.
A blanket apology to all those who have been whacked by my and my overenthusiastic poster that I cannot ever bring myself to check with my luggage – I can buy clean underwear at the conference, but those posters are expensive and irreplaceable at the last minute.
I printed my poster on Spoonflower’s performance knit fabric – it cost a whopping $18 (typically $20, but they give you a “designer’s discount” for printing your original work) and then $15 for express shipping. I combined with another student so we split the shipping in order to have it ready for the conference in time. Often they run free regular shipping promotions, so if you have it all together and have your posters ready 3-4 weeks before conference departure, you might be able to knock a few more dollars off the price.
I should have the poster by next Friday – it’ll be fun to have a reveal and show it to other members of the department.
Interested in seeing how I printed the poster? Spoonflower has a handy guide here.