Does anyone have one of these or know how I could get one?  I thought I'd ask this group because I know some of you are rubber stamp crafters and might have thoughts on this.

I always make my own PBS stickers for my outgoing book packages and I thought it would be cool to do some mail art using the PBS logo stamp.  I know I could probably have one made up at the printing shop my office uses, but if they already exist I'd be thrilled.

Thanks!!

I like your ideas a lot, Linda, because I decorate all my PBS book packages, as much as I have time for; and PBS logo items are a big part of that. I don't know if I'd call it making my own stickers, but when I print out the mailing labels on 81/2" x 11" sticky paper, I always cut out the rectangular strip with the logo and URL on it, stick it on the package, and then decorate it in some way. I love rubber stamps, and sometimes use those in decorating them my packages. Mail art: all right!!

HOWEVER, and here I know I'm going to get into trouble, I don't like the PBS logo. The concept of the recycling symbol is great, but the design doesn't work for me, for a lot of many reasons. For starters, I'm no fan of the colors: that weird blue, so saturated it can't be anything but machine-made, yet too washed out to be a real "neon bright" royal blue, and that almost mustardy yellow, which strikes me personally as an unpleasant, vaguely nauseating hue. (Apologies if you like the colors: reactions to colors are from the gut.) And the whole design strikes me as busy, busy, busy. There's the "PaperBackSwap" letIters--yellow w/ black outlines--overlying the whole thing--then underneath that...It's just too many letters, all yellow & black, crammed on top of each other, going in all directions. Then, what really puts it over the top,  is the basic *shape*: try drawing a line around the thing, and look at what you have. The shape of the recycling logo is always iffy, itself: I prefer it when it's a perfect 6-sided hexagon, every side the same, like a bee's hexagon. But it's not just that: there's a "P" on the left sticking out, and part of a  "C" and all of a "K" on the right sticking out. And the things sticking out and ruining the lines of the recycling logo are the same (yukky) yellow as the logo itself! How is the eye supposed to make sense of that? I'm sorry: it's ugly.

Until someone designs a new logo, though, it is what it is. What I've been thinking of doing, is coming up with a simple image for printing on sticky paper & sticking to my book packages, to substitute for the PBS logo. I'm imagining something like books passing back and forth,  maybe across the country, very simple and without words--and then putting next to it, the URL, with the "PaperBackSwap" part of the URL slightly larger and in a different  color (not black) that echoes one of the colors in the book-passing part.. I'll print *that* out on sticky paper and put on each package i send out. What could it hurt?

Fiona

Fiona, thanks for your response.  Please see the posts over in the 'Questions about PaperBackSwap' discussion.  A few people responded and I've decided to order a stamp from simon stamps.  When I uploaded the PBS logo it came out as just a line drawing and I thought I'd do it about 2x2 and print with a medium blue ink and maybe color it in, if I'm in the mood.  Mostly for the book packages that I send in larger envelopes and not wrapped in the standard bookwrapper.

For the stickers I make I just  paste two (in color) of the logos on each label of a sheet of address labels (avery 5160).  I cut them out individually so I end up with sixty 1x1 stamps.  I use one or two on each package.  I like to put them on the short ends of a regular wrapped book instead of small piece of tape to hold it shut while I wrap it in the packing tape.  The smaller version of the image isn't so bad and my printer does a decent job of the colors.  I even made a few business cards and bookmarks on cardstock to see how they would turn out.

Regarding the logo, maybe just 'revamp' the  www.PaperBackSwap.com url in some sort of a combination of blue and yellow (to keep it true to the original) over either a book or post box image?  There's also the images on the 'spread the word' page.  I copied one of the blue  web 'links' ones to get the colors for part of the bookmark and it worked out okay.