As I write this there are three people who work for Positive Posters. Tenielle, Zac and myself. Between us we do a lot of different things that we often don’t have any formal training in e.g. copy writing, event planning and marketing. This means we are always very busy and I’ve found that it means we sometimes don’t do an amazing job of keeping our community ‘in the loop’. To get everyone up to date, last month I sent the following email to our volunteers, friends and partners. As you make up our wider community, I thought I would share it with you. I hope it gives you an idea of where we are now and where we are heading.

Looking forward to announcing the winner on Wednesday at the exhibition.

- Nick

“Hello everyone.

This is email is going out to all volunteers, partners and friends of Positive Posters.

I am writing to you all so that everyone is up to date with all of the things happening in the world of Positive Posters. This year has been very successful for us and I am aware that while we have managed to achieve a lot of our goals, we have not done our best in keeping everyone informed as to what we have done, and where we are headed. This email will hopefully get everyone up to scratch (I will try my best to keep this short and to the point).

There are 5 points below:

1. Competition Summary

This year we took a very big step and opened the brief up by letting the designers choose their own topics under the banner of ‘global issues’. If you have ever worked with a designer you will know this is potentially fatal as restrictions breed creativity and minimal restrictions send designers running. However, we felt that we wanted to encourage designers to think about issues that affected them rather that us tell them what to design about.  So we expected a slight drop in the number of entrants as a result. We did allow people to submit more than one poster this year, which we feel went well.

The final stats for the year were as follows:

Number of Entrants
2010 ­– 1,518
2011 – 1,466

Number of Entries
2010 – 1,518
2011– 2,639

Number of Countries
2010 – 82
2011 – 87

2. Exhibition
Each year we hold an exhibition of the Top 30 posters (finalists) from the competition in Melbourne where we also announce the winning poster. This years details are below with a link to the Facebook event, we hope to see you all there.

Wednesday 9th November
Venue: 1000£ Bend (361 Little Lonsdale St)
From 5:30pm
Facebook Event Link

3. Prizes
We welcomed some new partners on board this year who have kindly provided prizes for the people who come first second or third. This years prizes are:

First Place
• Poster distribution in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide
• $1,500 cash & $1,500 to a charity of their choice

Second Place
• Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet

Third Place
• Safari Living Prize Pack

4. Our Community
One thing I really wanted to bring to your attention is the changes that I’ve personally witnessed in our community. We think that our community is the single most valuable asset we have and so, we take very good care of them. Like in previous years and with your help, I traveled to Sydney, Perth and Hobart to speak with small and large groups of design students talking about what we do and building relationships. As always, this proved to be very valuable in gaining new friends and supporters of Positive Posters. Throughout the year the team and myself have spent lots of hours on Facebook and Twitter talking to and engaging with our new and old friends. While we have seen a very steady increase of ‘followers’ across both platforms, this is not what excites us. We’ve been excited by and have strived to develop high quality relationships with our community, rather than focus on growing the quantity through ‘social media campaigns’ or any other form. This has meant that we now have a very active, loyal and engaged on and offline community who trust us and whom we really enjoy hanging out with

I would also like to mention that we have a Tumblr account that is run be 5 volunteers from around Australia that we found through Facebook. It’s looking really nice. Thanks guys.

5. 2012
While there is still more work to be done this year, we have started discussing plans for 2012. As a group, our desire is the keep the competition running because we don’t feel like we have even begun to realize the potential that Positive Posters has. Our focus in 2012 will be on the follow:

• Improve and grow the annual poster distribution model/network;
• Improve the design and functionality of our site, with a focus on ‘Designer Profiles’ & ‘Simplifying User Interface’;
• Explore international student engagement;
• Challenge the current model and question everything

So far, this year has been a very exciting one for everyone involved with Positive Posters. There is no way that we would have been able to continue to run the organisation this year if it wasn’t for you, our partners, volunteers and friends. Thank you all for your continued support.

Thanks also for taking the time to read this email, I appreciate it. I’ll be in touch again shortly after the exhibition. In the mean time, if you have any questions, please email or call me. Hope to see you there!

Cheers and thanks,

Nick Hallam”