the tear of perforation!

Behind the scenes of my booth at Stationery Fest

Hello my friends!!

I truly meant to write a newsletter a few weeks ago, but I was completely caught up in the waaaAAAAaaave that was Stationery Fest 2024!! I was SO BUSY through the weeks leading up to the fest, and then SO BUSY during the fest, and then SO BUSY the week after the fest (and also, sick 😭)… Now it’s finally feeling like the Stationery Fest wave has passed and the waters are calming down again.

In this moment of calm, I have a moment to write my newsletter!

I would summarize everything that happened since we last chatted, but my brain hasn’t had time yet to process and synthesize the last few weeks of nonstop activity! So instead of delaying a newsletter update even further, I’m going to share snippets of my Stationery Fest experience through a few posts. Today’s newsletter is focused on my booth, next newsletter will cover my printer workshop (and some software I wrote for it?!), and maybe after that I’ll be ready to share some fully processed thoughts on it all. Maybe! We’ll see!

Enjoy today’s newsletter, all about booths!!

♡ vrk

---

Designing Booth #2

My first time ever tabling at an event was a few months ago at Milwaukee Zine Fest. I thought my booth setup worked really well for MZF, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to use the exact same setup for Stationery Fest.

For one, my booth had a different purpose at Stationery Fest! I didn’t want to sell all of my zines; I wanted to introduce just Pouch Magazine (and indirectly, Pouch Studio) to a stationery-loving audience. At MZF, I was also one of hundreds of vendors selling zines, but at Stationery Fest, I was the ONLY vendor who was primarily selling a zine, as other vendors were mostly selling, well, stationery! I knew I needed to do more work to communicate who I was and what I was offering.

Most other vendors at Stationery Fest were much more established than those of a typical zine fair, too. For instance, MUJI was a vendor at Stationery Fest, as was Pilot, Leuchtturm1917, Faber-Castell, Blackwing, Kaweco… There were smaller indie brands and artists with booths as well, but even these vendors leaned closer to “small businesses” than causal DIYers. Because of this, I wanted my booth at Stationery Fest to look a bit more polished than it did at MZF.

Another thing I wanted to try: For me, one of the most exciting aspects of Pouch is the potential for others to collaborate on it. Stationery Fest would be a good opportunity to meet not only potential readers of Pouch, but also potential contributors to Pouch! To capture the spirit of this, I thought it’d be fun if I could provide some way for people to contribute to Pouch at my booth, vs just asking for potential contributors to follow up after the event.

With those goals in mind, it was time to design my booth!

The first booth prototype

I decided to offer visitors 3 things to do at my Stationery Fest booth:

1. Buy Pouch Issue 1

2. Preorder Pouch issues 2 & 3

3. Take a stationery-related survey

   1. Whose results would make it into a future issue of Pouch. This would be the way folks could participate in its creation!

Here’s what my first prototype of my booth looked like. I mocked up the pieces I was least sure about using white cardstock and pencil:

The first prototype of my Stationery Fest booth!

The “Buy Pouch Issue 1” part was pretty straightforward, but I needed to iterate quite a bit in the “Preorder 2 & 3” and “Take a survey” parts of the booth!

A survey about stationery

I was noodling on a way for people to participate in the making of Pouch at my booth. Originally, I was imagining something bigger and grander, like a photo station where I could take photos of people’s journals for Pouch Issue 2’s layout gallery, or a place where I could conduct micro interviews with attendees on their favorite stationery items. However, because my entire booth was just 3 feet wide, I couldn’t imagine how it’d work! I needed something simple, with a smaller footprint. Had I seen anything like this before?

I thought of tip jars at coffee shops that let you vote on a question using your tip money. Could I do something like that at Stationery Fest?

It didn’t make sense to have a tip jar at my booth 😆 But maybe I could have a question, and jars representing choices, and folks could cast their votes by, say, throwing a bead in a jar… but I wondered if there was a better metaphor, one that matched the stationery theme of the event.

Then I thought, “Ah, how about letters?”

I imagined a little mailbox at my booth, with a letter-writing station, and a bunch of different stationery-related survey questions, like: “What’s your favorite black ink pen?” Folks could write out their answer to the prompt, and then drop their answer in the mailbox.

Perfect!!

…Well, except for aaaaaaaall the details! It took so much iteration to get the details right.

Initially I thought something like this could be so cute, a wall of cards that people could pick up and fill out:

An inspiration photo from Pinterest

…but argh, I didn’t have space for this! Plus designing all these cards would be so much work, and making or buying the perfect envelopes would also be time and $$…

I then wondered, “Hmm, is there a way I can design the card and envelope all in one? Like these folded letter-and-envelope cards I sometimes see…”

I started making a version of this, but quickly I was like, “Aghhhh, I’m going further down the wrong direction! Even if I nailed the design, it would be soooo slow & time-consuming to mass-produce.”

Then I thought, “Hmm, could I make something that looks like a mini zine display, but each zine is a survey question!? I know how to mass-produce zines…”

I prototyped a display that looked like this:

Each of these little zines unfolded like this, with a survey question and some space to write an answer:

sorry the picture is horrible loll I should have taken better in-progress shots!

I thought this was closer!! But a few things weren’t working:

• Too small to write comfortably: As a survey, these little pieces of paper were a bit uncomfortable to write on. Can I improve the ergonomics?

• Unclear: It REALLY wasn’t clear what this display was supposed to be, despite my signage. It looked like I was selling 6 little zines. Can I make my display clearer, without distracting from the rest of my booth?

• The cute part is wasted: The survey cards were small and cute, but my attendees wouldn’t get to keep them. Could survey takers keep the cute part somehow?

So I made the following changes:

• Bigger cards: Instead of 6 questions on little pieces of paper, I reduced to 3 questions and make each card bigger. I also went with thicker paper and a traditional greeting card shape, rather than the accordion-style fold, so it was easier to handle and write upon.

• Clearer covers and signage: Since I had a bit more space on the cards, I tweaked the covers to more clearly indicate what question they were asking. I also improved the signage surrounding the display.

• The cover is a souvenir: I made the cover detachable by perforating the fold, so that after people filled out the card, they could carefully tear off the cover to keep! (I’m really proud of this part lol, check out this video I link at the bottom of the email to see this in action)

My survey station was looking like this:

Good enough!! Let’s move on to the rest of the booth!

Preorder design iterations

My original concept for my Pouch Issue 2 & 3 preorder form was to make a card that looked like the subscription card found in magazines. I drew up a card that looked like this:

Which was cute on its own!!

Arghhh buuuuut in the display, it didn’t work:

It’s unclear what the card is, and the black & white paper gets lost amongst the rest of the table.

So instead, I made a card that looks sorta like another issue of Pouch, but is slightly smaller to hint that there’s something different about it:

I also drew up some cute signage!

Similar to the survey cards, I made the subscription card perforated and its cover detachable, so that someone who preorders Pouch Issue 2 & 3 can keep the cover as a gift. (Again I’m proud of this lol, please check out this video so you can better see what I mean!!)

The final display!

I put it all together and here’s what my final display looked like:

…Well, on the left is what I went with on Day 1, and on the right is what I went with by Day 3!

After Day 1, I realized the survey was pulling too much focus! A lot of visitors would interact with the survey first, then realize “ohhh cool you’re a magazine.” That was backwards! Probably didn’t help that there was a black sign with an arrow literally pointing away from my Pouch display…

So I got rid of the black chalkboard sign and made a few other changes by Day 3. You can play “spot the difference” between v1.0.0 and v1.0.2 above 😂 (answer key)!

VIDEO: See the booth in action!

I made an Instagram post if you wanna see a demo of what it all looked like in action:

---

So how did it go?!

Incredibly well!!! I met so many wonderful people at Stationery Fest and I got such a warm reception for Pouch. I met new Pouch fans, I met some early Pouch fans who had ordered issue 1 before Stationery Fest, I met some folks who bought Pouch Issue 1 on the first day of Stationery Fest and came back later date to preorder the rest, I even met someone who was inspired to get their first ever travel journal because of Pouch…! 🥹

(I ALSO met a ton of women interested in printers — but I’ll save that for next newsletter!)

I sold over 200 copies of Pouch Issue 1 in the last few weeks, both at Stationery Fest and through online orders afterwards. I also have over 70 preorders for both Pouch Issue 2 & 3, and over 200 people responded to my surveys! (And I now have a giant stack of surveys to process lol.)

Overall I had a blast at Stationery Fest and I’m so grateful I got to participate 💖 And I haven’t even talked about the printer workshops! Stay tuned for my recap of that soon. I’ll try to send my next update out a bit sooner than my usual monthly cadence… maybe even next week!! 🖨️

Epilogue

After Stationery Fest, I wanted to quickly get in touch with everyone who had purchased a Pouch preorder. The preorder cards were cute and all, but I imagined folks would want a digital confirmation for their order, especially for items that would arrive next year! So after the event, I manually typed in all of the information from my stack of preorder cards into a spreadsheet. I squinted at the wobbly letters from the people who had written hastily on tiny clipboards in the busy marketplace. I took pictures of each card and personally emailed a confirmation to everyone who had ordered.

As a software engineer, this experience made me chuckle! I spent so much time designing my Pouch booth, all to effectively implement two forms — a survey form, and a preorder form — in the least efficient, most convoluted way possible. These forms were not only incredibly time-consuming to make (e.g. I hand-perforated each piece of paper with pretty much a specialized pizza cutter), but also incredibly error-prone. Isn’t this a solved problem already?! Couldn’t I have just given people a QR code to a Typeform?! It would have been way faster, way more accurate, way simpler!

But, I’m so glad I did what I did. My forms were fun 😎 The little survey cards I have stacked on my desk are filled with drawings and written with passion. I saw people’s eyes light up when they realized the card was perforated, and the spark of excitement that came from tearing the perforation and receiving their prize, as humble as it may be. Someone said it was the funnest survey they’d ever taken!

My forms were fun!!! In a way that I don’t think is replicable by a digital form. Is there anything quite like the tear of perforation?

In the tech world, it was so ingrained in the culture that “faster” + “more efficient” was “better.” Through my paper journey, I keep rediscovering how untrue that is! I love it!!! It makes me feel excited, and hopeful 💓