1" Custom Printed Consumatron Buttons (100 ct.)

Item Purchased: 1" Custom Printed Consumatron Buttons (100 ct.)
Location Purchased: buttonguy.org
Price: $25.00 ($0.25/ea)

Review: I was looking for affordable ways to get the word out about Consumatron.com. I could have taken the cold, impersonal route and started to blast online message boards and email lists with annoying missives that said "Hey guys, check out my website!" but no one likes those things and few respond. Besides, I don't want this to be just another consumer review site complete with spamming tendencies. I want it to be a personal reaction to daily consumerism. I hope I'm accomplishing that.

So along with the personality of the site, I decided to make the advertising a personal endeavor. Where better to find an ethic of human interaction and creativity than through the punk/diy community? Say what you will about the music, but the community aspect of punk/diy culture stems from something not only contrarian and political, but also something very caring and personal.

So, in searching for services to hype the site, I turned to the greatest punk/diy resource out there. It's called Book Your Own Fucking Life. BYOFL is a directory of bands, zine publishers, crafters, small presses, coffee shops, concert venues, places to crash while traveling and other resources for wandering DIYers. It was there that I found ButtonGuy.

I had heard of buttonguy.org in the past from the pages of Maximumrocknroll, Punk Planet and other zines and magazines. Once I almost used his services for making buttons for my print zine, Burning Jelly. The zine lay in limbo since issue #2 (as it stands, BJ is now my personal blog online), but zinesters never forget.

Buttonguy.org is a guy who offers his 1" button making services to earn a little extra scratch. Unlike the 16-year old with a button maker living in his parents' basement down the block, buttonguy.org offers high quality buttons at low prices and a quick turnaround time. After uploading him my image file and paying through PayPal.com, it took no longer than a week for me to receive my initial order of 100 buttons. The buttons look great and though I was afraid the text would be too small to read, it is crisp and easily distinguished when you look closely at the buttons. The burning money fist logo draws people to the buttons as I learned when I put some out on the counter at work for people to grab.

So now, instead of some annoying mass-email or spam on some website somewhere, I can leave a button on my table at the coffee shop when I leave or simply hand one to someone, look them in the eye, make a very human connection and let them decide if they want to check out the site.

So, if you need any promotional buttons made, don't stop anywhere else. Go directly to buttonguy.org. It's extremely easy to upload your button design as there are templates to download and easy-to-follow instructions to follow for photo-shopping your image. For those of you with no graphics experience whatsoever, you can also mail him your design. Buttonguy is incredibly flexible and ready to accomodate your needs. Also, from the time of my order to the time I received my buttons, I was provided with status e-mails as to when my image was formatted and when the buttons were sent out.

So all you zine publishers, musicians, website designers and other creative types...don't sleep. Contact buttonguy.org! I'll be placing another order with him soon.

And if anyone would like a button or two, just get in touch with me by leaving a comment here or on consumatron's myspace profile. You can send me a SASE or if you are in Chicago, meet me in person and make this website stuff a little more warm and human.

Rating: 4.75 / 5