Demand It!

The advent of Print on Demand sites, ones like Cafepress and Zazzle, can prove to be a unique addition to larger and long term gaming guilds. Simply put, packaging is everything. Especially on the internet where we are constantly bombarded with better looking browsers, sites and games. Skimping on your guilds' branding can be detrimental if you wish to offer more than the rest.

Print on demand is exactly what it sounds like – you upload your image(s) to the site and apply it to a multitude of products to be made available for anyone interested in sporting your swag. Naturally, you can print t-shirts and coffee mugs, but there is quite a long list of things that can be created. The cost to the creator is minimal since you don't have to order large quantities of the product in the hopes of it all selling – like in the caveman-esque pre-millennium days.

Why is this important to a guild? You spent time carefully picking the name for your guild – something brilliant and original like 'She Looked Legal'. Then making a logo of such meticulous design that it can only truly be appreciated at 1600 X 1600 pixels. Possibly a catch phrase has been selected as well – 'Get 'em while they're too young to know better'. You've got a website and forums and have been steadily thriving in your chosen game. You know you can take it further. You can take it beyond the monitor by creating your first official guild t-shirt. Realistically, not everyone in the guild will purchase one, but the ones who do will show it with pride. Those forums could have a picture thread started very soon full of members wearing their new shirts.

Is this going to ensure a rapid rise to the upper echelon of gaming guilds? No, but since so many guilds are poor copies of each other, this could be one way to help set yours apart from the rest. For something that is so easy to get started it almost seems like a shame to ignore it. Plus, this gives everyone you encounter in real life the opportunity to appreciate the hard work you put into your guild logo depicting a guy defiling an army of under-age pixels.