Digital BW, The Print

Tom,

I would discourage trying to put a lot of rigid constraints on the exchange
for two reasons:

First, you may be eliminating people who would otherwise like to
participate. Not everyone lives in an urban area where FedEx drops are
easily accessible. For some people, the nearest place to ship anything will
be something like their local Piggly Wiggly (hi Jerry!) and who knows how
far or how much snow they'll have to drive through to get there. I think
strongly reccomending something is fine, but if it was me, I would want to
be flexible enough to make sure everyone who wanted to could participate. It
has been firmly established, however, that I am a sucker.

Second, you're kidding yourself if you think people are actually going to do
what you ask, even if you make it required. Human nature is a funny thing,
even people with the best intentions will misread something or simply miss
it completely. Being prepared for deviation from the outset is probably the
best thing for your sanity.

As far as the packaging goes, small FedEx boxes fit letter and A4 just fine,
but they dont fit securely. There's too much wiggle room for the prints to
move around and get damaged unless they're secured with some kind of inner
packing. This is where the standard issue boxes that your paper comes in
will fail you, because A4 doesn't fit in a letter sized box and vice versa.
They seem like a great idea when you're sending your prints in, because
you've got a pile of them laying around, but if you use them then the
coordinator winds up getting screwed. For everyone that used a standard
paper box for the inner box, I wound up putting all the prints in a plastic
bag, and securing it with tape so it was tight and the prints couldn't move
around. Then I cut cardboard sheets that were bigger all around than the
prints, but just small enough to fit inside the small FedEx boxes. I taped
the plastic wrapped prints between two sheets of cardboard so the prints
wouldn't slide around and the cardboard could absorb some minor impacts
without the prints getting damaged. I think a few people managed to find
boxes that made effective inner packing and fit both sizes of prints, but I
don't remember anything that looked like it was readily available or cheap.

You're right about FedEx being by far the most convienent though.

-Jason


> -----Original Message-----
> From: tomoc [mailto:tomoc@...]
> Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2002 6:02 PM
> To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Digital BW] Re: 13x19 print exchange NEW EXCHANGE
>
>
> Nigel, Jason & Shilesh --
>
> Thanks for the input. I have a few specific questions for you:
>
> 1. What is the availability of Fedex in Europe? I am thinking of
> making it a "fedex" only since I have such easy access to fedex
> (airborne would be a compromise alternative). Is the cost fair? It
> looked to me that Fedex to Shilesh was about double the cost of
> postage, but 1/10th the hassle.
> 2. I am intending to require a return prepaid fedex sticker. I did
> this on my prints to you, Shilesh, and I found that to make that
> happen one either had to put his/her credit card info on the address
> label or open a fedex account (took 2 minutes and costs nothing,
> allows you to print shipping labels on the internet for a 10%
> discount and then drop in any fedex box).
> 3. I'm thinking letter/A4 prints...has anyone decided there is or
> isn't a simple box that holds each? Jason, you mentioned the fedex
> boxes, can you confirm they hold either/both sizes nicely? Do you
> happen to know the box description (to avoid any confusion)?
>
> Thanks,
>
> tom