Print

The Print Production team works year round to manage the design, content and printing of all printed materials for Burning Man. From the Summer Newsletter to the Survival Guide, from the stickers to the WhatWhereWhen guide, this team makes it all happen, and makes it look good.

In 2006 the Print Production team had perhaps their most successful year to date producing important Burning Man event information and exciting visuals including The Burning Man Ticket Announcement, ticket, and poster; The Burning Man Journal; The Burning Man Survival Guide; 2006 Black Rock City Map, WhatWhereWhen 2006, and two accompanying stickers.

A big highlight of the year in print was the creation of the 2006 Ticket Announcement and the 2006 Ticket. A staff member created the artwork used for the 2006 Ticket Announcement and poster, bringing this year’s theme to life, and another artist created the ticket with a completely different take on the theme. The result was two visually exciting pieces. These projects fell early in the year and helped set the Print Production stage for Burning Man 2006.

Our biggest success in 2006 was The Burning Man Survival Guide. This was the second year working with the same designer and it paid off significantly. The Burning Man Survival Guide received an overhaul and the result was an easy-to-read guide that looks different and exciting (we’re told that even veteran participants read The 2006 Burning Man Survival Guide)! Getting The Burning Man Survival Guide out the door was an impressive feat of community collaboration: staff and volunteers came together for days to get the job done. Close to three dozen people donated their time and hands to stuffing, sorting and mailing The Burning Man Survival Guide.

Other successes include The Burning Man Journal (which came out in a timely fashion pre-event and was an extremely useful tool to communicate with Burning Man participants and potential participants), the 2006 Black Rock City Map (remarkable for its bright, colorful representation of the city), and accompanying stickers. The Burning Man community loves stickers and we had a wonderful selection of artwork created by and for the Burning Man community – so many great designs that this year we printed two different stickers! The Black Rock City Map, WhatWhereWhen and accompanying stickers were distributed by Greeters to participants upon arrival at the Burning Man event.

As in the past, the WhatWhereWhen print production proved to be a daunting task. The number of events submitted by participants nearly doubled in 2006 and it is not until very late in the print production process and timeline that we find out how this impacts the project: editing, matching locations, layout, and version control—all in the final days before departing for the playa, for many weeks. Regrettably, we experienced a version control issue and accidentally printed a small amount of 2005 information related to café art. The Print Production team extends deepest apologies to Café artists and anyone who feels that their information was not properly presented in 2006. Please know that we do our very best to make this a fun, easy-to-read calendar of events and we look forward to re-evaluating the WhatWhereWhen process for 2007.

Overall, the challenges and successes of 2006 made it a visually exciting, informative, eventful year for the Print Production team!

Submitted by,
Bex Workman