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Damian's photos from Caption 2001

Caption, Oxford's annual small-press comics convention, was held in the Oxford Union Society, Oxford, England on the 18th and 19th of August 2001.

Making badges

Making the badges for attendees is the one duty I retain (apart from this web site). In the olden days this was an exceedingly clever program that generated hand-crafted PostScript page descriptions from a text file containing the list of members. Every year I exhume my old Tcl scripts and adapt the design so as to different graphics and layout. In a break with tradition, this year I did it the easy way—with a DTP program on my ancient Apple Macintosh Perform 5260.

As the sheets of card emerged slowly from the printer I sliced them up on a hand guillotine. This is one of those home essentials for small-press types. I allowed a bit of watsed card on all four sides to take account of the area the printer can't reach, so I had to guillotine off that bit too. The final step is sticking a safety pin to the back of each badge. This year I hit on the idea speeding up the process by buying a packet of little self-adhesive labels rather than a reel of sticky tape. Useful tip!