My protest signage improved at this week's #TeslaTakedown

Protest sign with bold text: 'Our GOVERNMENT was FINE' in black and blue, followed by 'Now it is MUSKed UP!' in red. An image of Elon Musk is crossed out with a red circle and line. The bottom displays 'Fire Elon' in flaming orange letters. — My protest sign for the #TeslaTakedown today.

I'm a long way from a career change to graphic design or protest communications, but this week was a definite improvement. About a half dozen people asked for pictures of my sign. That's a good signal, so I'm including instructions below on printing and making one yourself.

It was another windy, gloomy day at the Easton Tesla store, but the number of people increased from last Saturday. One organizer said between 450 and 500 people, which seemed about right to me. It was just a little more than we had last week. The weather forecast for next week is about 15 degrees warmer, so it will be interesting to see if the families with young children come out again like on March 8th.

The entertainment definitely improved. Someone set up an amplified acoustic guitar and a microphone, and people took turns singing. We marched two laps around the block, and there were many more honks and cheers from the cars driving by. Promptly at 5:30, the organizers walked around and asked people to leave to be respectful of the Columbus police dialogue team that had been called out for what was advertised as a one hour protest. That seemed reasonable.

This week's protest sign

Protester in front of a Tesla building holds a sign reading, “Our GOVERNMENT was fine. Now it is MUSKed up! Fire Elon.” with a image of Elon Musk crossed out. The person wears a blue jacket, standing against a gray, overcast sky, with bare tree branches framing the scene. — My protest sign at the #TeslaTakedown.

Back to basics, I thought. People are driving by quickly, so too much text won't be read. So this was the idea.

Set the context: "Our GOVERNMENT was FINE."
Deliver the punchline: "Now it is MUSKed UP!"
Clear call-to-action: "FIRE ELON!" (in a flaming font, nonetheless)

And that seemed to work.

Refer to the March 8th blog post for instructions on creating the sign. If you want one too, I've uploaded the 6-page PDF of page tiles to make the sign. When you print them, line them up with three on top and three on the bottom. Then, trim the bottom and right edges of each page. For the two right-most pages, there will be a lot of extra, unused space to cut off, and there are crop marks you can use to trim at just the right spot. There are a few millimeters of overlap between pages, so your trimming doesn't have to be exact. Then line up the pages and tape them to a poster board (or, as in my case, a recycled campaign yard sign.) This is set up to make a 26" by 16" sign — the exact dimensions of a typical campaign yard sign! Ping me on Mastodon or Bluesky if you use it, and include a picture if you'd like!

So now that I've shown improvement week-by-week, I need to figure out how to step up my game for next Saturday...