Raising money and a concept for an international public space awareness campaign

1. Raising Money
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One of the simplest and most effective ways to help raise money for 'message expansion' is through usable merchandise and stylish apparel. At the foundation, the T-shirt to many is an item of collection, fashion and expression. In two words, "T-shirts sell!" There is already dialog and interest among Evolver's current users. On Daniel's blog post 'Building the Evolver Social Movement', Jai Shaw commented, "how about something that will help advertise Evolver and make you some money, like t-shirts." In response, Doctordewey said "I'd definitely pay... for an evolver t-shirt, but I will never pay to be part of a blog community."

Production: I've designed and produced apparel in Toronto and Tokyo for a variety of clients, and worked with custom cut and sew + silk screen and embroidery manufacturers. High quality, eco-green, sweat labor free production costs are surprising low, equaling an extremely positive ROI. Even when selling at a fair price ($25 - $40 for product and support).

Design: If it sounds like I'm pitching for the project - It's because I am! I would love to design and produce merch for Evolver. But perhaps an open design concept/model works better within this network. For example, we (the Evolver community) could upload our T-shirt concepts/messages and vote on which ones to actually produce and sell.

- Just the surface of a simple idea...

2. Concept for an international public space awareness campaign
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We all have within us the desire of being a part of a movement that will change/advance the world. Evolver - It's our world to change. The messages we have are vast! But could we, as a group, design a symbol or icon that unified us outside our personal brand identities. I'm thinking Golden Flower, Conan, 12 monkeys... Something provocative, fearful, uplifting, ridiculous... Inspired by the 'prophecy symbol' from the Japanese film '20th Century Boys' (http://www.evolver.net/sites/realitysandwich.civicactions.net/files/20th...) I imagined a world wide awareness campaign that would lift a few heads and develop a lot of web clicks.

Step 1. Design a symbol/icon. Step 2. Ask users to reasonably and subtly tag, sticker, post or paint 'the symbol' in their communities and workplaces over a period of 6 months. Step 3. Selected and promote a day for all users to wear a T-shirt or carry a flag of the symbol/icon (available for purchase on evolver.net or make it yourself). Should the shirt even have a web address? Will they be looking? Will they ask? Just a thought.

Blessings,

- mark

(say: hello@hitosan.com)