Multilingual Mailing

Oakland's District 2 includes Chinatown and a Latino community along International Blvd, so we printed messages in Chinese and Spanish. Analysis of the voter roll will tell you which languages your campaign might need.

Shu Lee is a Green Party volunteer who took it apon herself to win over the Chinese voters. She invited reporters from the Chinese language newspapers to our campaign events, and the sections on the right are quotes from their articles. The back side, below, has Aimee's platform.

Shu is invaluable in communicating with the Chinese community. Aimee's name combines with the slogan below to mimick the sound of a popular Chinese song. Our volunteers were initially perplexed when people started humming after receiving this as a flyer! Shu also told me that the color white is considered unlucky, so we never handed out anything on plain white paper in Chinatown.

The Spanish language version is below. Keep in mind that Spanish text takes a little more space than English, while Chinese takes considerably less.

The immigration rallies were happening all over the country during our campaign, including in Oakland. The "Amnistia Ahora!" picture shows Aimee at a rally. Peter Camejo makes a good point that this issue offers an opportunity to the Greens.

The image below shows two print jobs on the same printing plate, or a "gang run". (I did not design the second piece.) It's expensive to make plates, so sharing one between two jobs saves a lot of money. It also saves to put both sides on the same plate.

The machine grabs the paper in the center, so there is a gutter that must remain clean. Be careful about paper thickness and quantity. Folded mailers can be thinner, but if you pair them you must pay for the thicker paper. You also get the same number of copies for each job. Knowing your printer, the tricks available, and planning ahead are the keys to saving money on printing.