The latest News on our SupportWebStandards.com products
New Promo Video
Last Updated: 06 Dec 2011
We're really excited to release our new Promo Video. A quick 46 seconds showcasing our products. If a picture says a thousand words, how many does a video say? A short background to the video can be found on this blog post...
Check out the video below:
Last order dates for Christmas shipping
Last Updated: 02 Dec 2011
As we're approaching Christmas, please be aware of the last order dates if you wish to receive your products before Christmas. See below for the dates.
We won't ship any orders placed a week after last order dates, until January 3rd 2012, at the earliest. This is to avoid the surge of Christmas mail and potential delays and/or loss.
Last Order Dates for 2011:
Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland: 18th December
Great Britain: 17th December
Europe: 17th December
USA: 5th December
Rest of the World: 5th December
If you place your orders before the end of these dates, there's a great chance of getting them before Christmas, but we can not guarantee it. Sorry.
New products, new site!
Last Updated: 30 Nov 2011
Just in time for Blue Beanie Day 2011, we've just launched some new products to help you show your love and support for web standards.
A few pertinent points-
New Products
Last year the vinyl stickers proved very popular, so we produced two separate sets this year (Sticker Pack 1 and Sticker Pack 2). Each set features five vinyl stickers plus a free bonus HTML5 sticker which uses the W3C's official HTML5 logo.
We also produced a new set of one inch buttons (or badges, if you like) to pin to your lapel, wooly jumper, bag or whatever you like. Each button pack has a free vinyl sticker included as well.
Our brand-new new product is a set of sketchbooks, one blank, one with a dotted grid, in fetching blue and orange covers. More details can be found on their product pages.
New site
New products on the old site would have been boring, so we redid the site completely. The shop is now fully integrated (even though it still uses PayPal for accepting payments). It was planned to be fully responsive with a mobile-first approach, but time was against us, so we have shelved the mobile site and the responsive refinements for tomorrow and Friday. We did our best to get this site 100% done, but there are still little loose ends that we'll tie up over the next couple of days. If you spot anything, let us know.
Shipping
We think we've got a better grip on shipping rates, everything is sent out using standard post. One thing though, the last shipping days to be guaranteed (or so the Post Office says) to get your stuff before Christmas is 6th December (worldwide, Ireland, UK and Europe have until about the 16th December) so if you order before the 5th, we'll have it shipped by the 6th.
Special Thanks
Thanks to Blacknight for graciously providing the hosting, they're good people and provide an excellent service, do check them out for all your hosting needs.
Support Web Standards Shop is temporarily closed!
Last Updated: 06 Dec 2010
We have closed our shop for a few weeks while we restock our shelves- We'll be back in the New Year with some new products to help you show your support for Web Standards.
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Creating Stickers
Last Updated: 01 May 2010
As our shop has sold out of vinyl stickers, I've decided to do a quick write up on the process of creating them.
Our stickers were printed on a eco solvent-based inkjet printer. Previously if you wanted vinyl stickers, you had to get them screen printed, which is a costly process- each colour had to have a separate screen and the production length had to be long enough to justify initial costs. Then to get a custom shaped label, you had to get a die created to stamp out the shape of the sticker (like a cookie cutter).
We are a really small operation and we could have gone the screen printing route for our stickers but we'd have to order and sell a heap of stickers to try make back the cost, and we'd only be able to get two or three stickers printed, which is no good, we wanted a nice little pack of stickers.
Using the eco solvent-based printing process allows us to produce small batches of stickers, using full CMYK colours and, as a special bonus, we can run the labels through a plotting machine that cuts the stickers to their finished shape with the minimum of cost and hassle- nice!
I was allowed free reign when it came to designing the stickers. At first I stuck to the imagery associated with the website, buttons and posters, but slowly expanded the colours and typography used in the stickers. In the end I had to choose five for production, so I chose the five I thought gelled together best. As part of my 'prototyping' (I annoyed the printers until they did some sample stickers for me) I was sticking the stickers on different stuff, like my desk unit and my iBook, to see how they worked. It was only when I saw Jeffrey Zeldman's avatar on my laptop, did I know that I needed to add a speech bubble sticker to the sticker packs (otherwise I'd have to deface my computer with a Sharpie).
It has to be noted that some extreme self control has to be used when dealing with custom shaped stickers- you can basically get any vector shape cut and sometimes more complicated shapes make it difficult to use the stickers, for example, stickers with small bits sticking out often get folded under the main sticker when applying.
If you have bought some stickers before they sold out, the best way to apply them is to use a piece of card stock (or a small squeegee if you have one) to smooth out the sticker, working from one end to the other. Vinyl stickers work best on a super smooth surface, like glass or plastic.
More photos available on Flickr.
- John Rainsford