Ho Ho Ho Printer Claus
Experiences as a Leader, National Operations 4 Comments 
badges we don't need no stinkin badges, brownies, facebook, girls guides, gsusa, journeys, just trying to help, leader issues, pet peeves, printers
This is a follow-up post to my last one called Twelve Page Pet Peeve that went viral almost immediately. I read some of the comments that were made in two different Facebook groups where it was shared. There may have been more, but those were the only two I saw. The vast majority of people agreed that GSUSA should provide printer-friendly downloads, and others gave advice like sending it off to be printed at a Staples or Office Depot. I’m not sure if the ones that suggested sending it off actually read the post all the way through, because I listed that as one of the options. Oh well. I’m sure there are also some who disagreed with me and don’t see an issue with what’s being released by GSUSA. It takes diff’rent strokes to move the world, yes it does, it takes diff’rent strokes to move the world.
Anyway, I always try to be someone who brings something to the table if I’m critical about whatever it is, so I realized I should probably post an example of what I’m imagining as printer-friendly. For instance, let’s look at the revised awards log which includes the new Badges and Journeys added this past summer. The one released by GSUSA is a full color PDF that’s 11″ x 24″ and comes in at a little over 9 meg:
You can certainly print it on letter size (8.5″ x 11″), but it’s a little too small in my over 40 years old eyes’ opinion. Printing it legal size (8.5″ x 14″) would help somewhat. But most people don’t have that paper size lying around their house so they’d have to go buy some just for that purpose, and who wants to add another errand to the list? I guess you could have it printed on card stock at your local Office Max/Staples and have it cut to size, but come on. How many people are going to go to that extreme? This post is about simplifying what the average leader has to do because we already have enough on our plate. If you want to do that, then knock yourself out, but I feel like it’s a little much to expect everybody to go that route. Do they even sell it in the stores? I don’t see where they do. There’s probably not enough of a profit margin.
Here’s what I would change. First, I’d format the file so that it’s specifically sized for 8.5″ x 11″ paper. Second, I’d take out the pink background so ink cartridges everywhere wouldn’t go on strike. Stripping out so much color will also lower the size of the file. So here’s what I would suggest:
What do you think? I hope if by some chance this is seen by someone who has some pull (it’s a long shot, I know), this clears things up when we ask for printer-friendly files. If you know of a GSUSA email address that I can forward this to and you know it’s not going to go into a big black hole (aka it won’t be a waste of my time), I’ll even send it that way as well.
If you’d like these as individual pages, you can download them here (Page One and Page Two). I’m not going to make them for the other levels because it’s way too time consuming to strip out the background. Whatever department at GSUSA should be able to whip this out quickly because I’m assuming the background is a separate layer that can be hidden very easily.
Anyway, like I always say, I’M JUST TRYING TO HELP!
I work in tech support for newspapers, so I know just where this is coming from. We have a similar problem with digital advertising — our artists, or ad agency artists, produce stunning works of art which are quite cost effective when mass printed on paper by high-volume presses. And then they go to put them on the web, or email them out, and they just do a print-to-pdf and create a 200 MB file that no one sees because no one can get it downloaded on their computers! You know those car dealer ads where they have all the little tiny pictures of the cars on their lots? They send over the full-size original photos, and if you just resize them, they are still huge files even though you only see 0.01% of the pixels at that size!
I wonder if the badge images are very-high resolution file images and haven’t been reduced, because that would sure increase the file size. It’s also really dumb to do that, because GSUSA makes a significant part of their revenue selling those copyrighted and trademarked items, and giving away unnecessarily-large copies of the images is just asking for counterfeiting!
As you’ve already identified, the background colors are killer. They waste ink, and when you make B&W copies you get something that not only wastes toner, but looks MUCH MUCH crappier than a clean, no-background version like you produced here.
Finally, there’s the thing you didn’t comment on, which is the paper size. Really? 11×24?!?!? A size which cannot be copied on any office copier on the planet? A huge win with your version is that it can be printed on two 8.5×11, double-sided 8.5×11, or an 11×17 poster size.
I found a 3.7 meg file (not sure where I came across it) so that’s better, but the background is still a cartridge killer. I’m guessing what’s contributing to the size of the first file is that it looks like they didn’t flatten the layers before they published it as a PDF.
Plus they need to take into account that many people are now mobile only and downloading a file that large is going to eat into a lot of data plans. I didn’t even think about that until just now.
Posting/Sharing. I agree, printing out on regular paper, black ink, is the best. Otherwise you use up so much ink. I don’t know who to forward this to, BUT I think GSUSA is Listening on some of the Take Action sites, so I will start with the Convention Chat one, since we are talking there about ideas for 2020. Keep up the good work!
Oh, and you mention mobile, too. That’s another think that makes me crazy, when they send me emails or post stuff on the web which is in multiple columns and broken up by pages. In order to read it you have to scroll up-down-back-forth and it’s really easy to miss stuff, especially on a phone.
The root of the problem is that they need to get their heads out of considering this a visual design problem, when what they are trying to communicate are words. And I can read the words a lot better when they are all in a straight line going down, in the font and at the size I select!