Making An Effective Show Sign, And Defining The Terms Of The Rig And The Flash.
-busking terms and theory.
Today we are going to talk about making a show sign, and the psychological strategies that goes into it.
We will begin by explaining two strange busking terms, Rig and Flash.
These strange occupational terms all concern setting up a performance area on the sidewalk.
The Rig, is all the stuff you bring to set up shop on the sidewalk, it is all the tools you need to busk and the bags and carts it takes to hold them. For example, your cards and coins, your table, an amp, a pouch, your Flash, and all the rest of your stuff.
The Flash, is any flashy prop that helps you build a crowd, it is your costume and the stuff in your Rig that you put out for the world to see to catch the people's attention and interest, and to show the world that you are there to work.
It also marks your territory, and creates credibility and structure.
It would be advisable to use Flash that also serves as a function in your act so it’s less dead weight. An amplifier and your Tip Box is a good example of dual purpose Flash.
But your Magic Show Sign is the quintessential example of Flash.
If a busker had nothing but a sign, it would serve all his purposes of informing the passer-bye of what is going on.
The Busker's Sign.
The most common busking sign, simply says, SHOW TIME!
Many busker's like to inform pedestrians what their art-form is, for example it may say, Mime Show or Puppet Show, but since we focus on Magic here, we will be discussing the street Magician's Sign if he so chooses to use one.
The trick to making an effective sign to stop people and get them to watch, is direct simplicity.
A busy city street can be very distracting and intimidating to a pedestrian. You'll notice businesses only use a few words in their signs to combat the short attention spans of the passer-bye.
The old rule in marketing is, one syllable words, one word or less.
So when constructing your sign, only use just two words, nothing else!
MAGIC SHOW just those two words in capital black and white, real big, and plain not fancy, MAGIC SHOW, but no other words.
No fancy borders or designs, no nothing.
Anything else on the sign will weaken its purpose.
No one wants to know your name, or how many awards you received, when they are trying to make a snap decision.
On the street you may only have seconds to make an impression.
A complicated, elaborate, or intricate sign is usually ignored by the passer-bye.
If you make your sign plain (like the description above) you will notice, almost every passer-bye will read it, and give some sort of reaction, usually of interest.
If you want to test this you can make two signs, one elaborate and overly informative and one plain, and experiment with them separately throughout the day, you will notice a very obvious difference.
People will watch, ask questions, and treat you like a rock star with the plain simple sign.
For a small sidewalk show, the sign should fit in your bag without folding and should have Velcro on the back and Velcro on the bag so that it will stick to the side of the bag.
You can make your sign out of poster board, clear tape, and a black felt marker.
You can find all these items for pennies on the dollar, in any stationary section of a grocery store or a dollar store.
In my experience a Busker's sign is unnecessary outside of the U.S. due to a stronger association to public entertainment.
Note: Making your sign plain enough to get the strongest results has been difficult since the introduction of digital tipping, my solution was to put the tipping info on the reverse side of the Magic Show Sign and turn it around at the end of the show to allow the audience to tip digitally.
Also I may put the tipping info on my tip box which is usually in a less prominent place than the Magic Show Sign anyway.
Another thing I do, is to use a collapsible tip box with magic show on the front and tipping info on the back.
I simply open it to the front for my show, and turn it around after the show for tipping, and fold it up and put it in my bag when I’m ready to go home.
One last important note about Flash.
If you want to keep your Rig light, don't bring anything, but what’s in your show, not extra tricks, not nothing.
In reality you don't even need any Flash, no bag, no nothing, just keep your tricks in your pocket and walk out on a sidewalk and go to work.
But very important, remember, Flash is an aid for crowd building, without Flash you will need to put out more energy to compensate for the lack of props which creates interest, credibility, and structure on your spot on the sidewalk.
If you don’t have Flash you will have to work harder.
Most beginners know this instinctively and will bring a lot of flash and wear a flashy costume to get people to stop and watch them.
Once an experienced busker has become more confident and experienced, flash becomes less necessary.
Don’t get me wrong we still bring it most of the time ha. Especially now that I’m getting older and don’t feel like bouncing around like a monkey to get people to watch me, like I did in my younger days.
But if you want to get really strong at crowd building, try working with little to no Flash, the constant rejection and intimidation will force you to figure out how to get peoples attention without it and hold them, if for no other reason to stop the feelings of failure and dejection.
Whelp I hope this helps someone out there.
Your Pal Jimmy.