Shift8 Creative Graphic Design and Website Development

If you haven't heard about SOPA, then please go and read this or simply Google it to find a bunch of other great sites and material. It's a really bad bill. That's obvious enough...Or so you'd think. There are actually quite a few people in congress who don't quite realize the gravity of the situation. It truly is something that could threaten the internet all over the world - not just the US.

Many sites are considering a black out in order to protest. While it would send a very strong message, as an individual user what can you do? Or is there anything you can do without shutting down your site? Yes! For starters, signing petitions and writing your state's representatives. Of course you'll likely get a canned auto-reply via e-mail. Believe me everyone is well aware things by now, I just feel like with how many people keep talking about how they get a canned response that our cries are falling on deaf ears. I feel like the message isn't getting through.

So, yes, actions speak louder than words (and e-mails). Sites shutting down in protest will make a difference, but I think so can each and every user on the internet as well. It's pretty common to have a profile picture on the internet, yes? Be if Facebook, Twitter, Google, or otherwise. Today I saw a friend on Twitter replaced his profile icon with a "STOP SOPA" in white letters with a black background. Big and bold. It was brilliant. I thought about it a bit and almost took the image and used it myself. Then I thought, well that might get confusing. Which is ok I suppose, it really could help drill in a point...But I then thought about a band. A band like one might wear in mourning. The truth is, if SOPA is successful, it would essentially kill the internet in many ways. So I designed a black band with "SOPA" on it. The word stop wouldn't fit diagonally and reproduce well at smaller sizes. I don't think it was necessary either given everyone signifies a black band/ribbon with mourning...And black itself not being the color of joy. I believe it does a good job and it still allows me to keep a good portion of my profile picture. My last reasoning for this is also that even if your profile picture is shown at a tiny size (like certain areas on Facebook and mobile devices) a black diagonal ribbon across any proflie image (regardless of legible print within it) could easily become a universal symbol for stop SOPA. A simple black square covering up everything would also work, but I just feel it doesn't look as pretty.

So if you don't want to go all out and black out your profile completely, you may want to consider doing the same. I'm providing a 150x150 pixel transparent PNG image that you can easily overlay on your profile picture. That should save you some time and trouble. I would like to make a generator as well, but I don't have the time right now. I may do so later. Though, I'd also be concerned about my server getting pegged if I did that. It would have to be a very shareable generator so that more people could easily get it on their site to help host and distribute load.

Anyway, you can download the image here and it is also displayed below.