Blaugust 14: Vending at Slutfest

Wrote a lil review on going to Slutfest yesterday:

https://wiki.scumsuck.com/events:2025_slutfest_aug

I think I can keep my reviews in the events more concise, and then blog more about them here.

Doing more events got me thinking more about my layout.

I am always complaining about the typical anime convention grid cube layouts that are covered in a bunch of shit and the artist is only visible through a peephole. They make me sad. I feel like they actively hinder human conversation and thus connection. It's hard enough to hear in a loud artist alley, let alone try to talk someone whos behind 3 feet of plastic cubes. I also just don't like them in a design sense. They're maximalist in a way that does not please me, especially the Wall Of Prints because each individual piece becomes unreadable in the forest of everything screaming to be the loudest. This is exacerbated by EVERYONE in the artist alley doing the same set-up. It does not help the artists stand out from each other, and does not make me want to browse the table. It's the Bootstrap and Tailwind of digital lmao.

I know my layout looks janky (it's just a table with some racks and shelves lol compared to people who get their signs printed professionally for $100 each but eh. I'm glad my “”“brand”“” is more diy and janky so I don't feel compelled to compete with other people trying to look professional. I personally feel a lot less anxious looking at table layouts at non-pop-culture conventions, whether it's mom soap craft fairs or DIY zine fests held in a gym. They're easy to read because they have a better curated selection of stuff. It's the equivalent of say.. someone with 5000 images in their one page portfolio because they're worried people won't flip through their stuff if they have to click, cuz the general internet audience has no attention span VERSUS 10 thoughtfully curated images on one page, with the option to click to different sections. There are just patterns that I can recognize as being part of a conSOOMer culture brain, and they are patterns that I would personally like to resist.

• I would like to continue painting hand-made signs on reinforced cardboard or other stiff materials. I cut little holes into them with an exacto knife, then use velcro strips to attach them to the canopy. I can also attach them to my tablecloth, or my bamboo mat that I've been bringing.
• I would like to continue using thrifted display shelves that are multipurpose, cuz I can use them at home to store our stock too. Hell we even thrifted our canopy for $50. It's amazing what you can find at a thrift store even in our backwoods country towns.
• I would MAYBE eventually like to have one large printed backdrop of my favorite piece or something (I could pin our dakimakura onto that lol [but then i could also get some metal fishnets and chains to pin our stuff as a backdrop too…]).
• I would REALLY love to get on making that “online catalog” as a binder with sheet protectors that I can add to. So people can see our full stock without us having to bring the whole thing. I'll even put in a coupon code in there so people can order online if we don't have something in person.
• I would love to have an 8.5×11 print binder, a 4×6 print binder, and a sticker binder full of stock. We will display the most relevant stock to the theme (i.e more slut and metal stuff for Slutfest, more anime and cartoons for more pop culture stuff) for people to touch and pick up and feel. And people can browse the binders if they really are interested.

Since I focused on caricatures this time, that's what sold the most. What a shock, right? I feel like a good 75% of the sales were the live drawings, and that's equiva

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