What a startup definitely needs is a WHITEBOARD. It supports your brainstorming and keeps important things always in sight of the team.
Thus, the very moment we moved into our office, we started looking for a whiteboard. In a stationery shop we could get a small metal plate for a lot of money . And that was definitely not something we were looking for, because we had imagined a huge whiteboard for a little money.
So we decided to do a whiteboard ourselves. On our request guys from a printing company kindly tried a whiteboard marker on their vinyl material they use for making banners. And for our delight the response was that it was possible to wipe the marker off. We bought 5 meters of vinyl material for 15 Euros, borrowed an electric drill and screwed the vinyl on our office wall. It was a real dream come true – almost the whole wall was now our whiteboard.
- Vinyl roll-material as whiteboard.
We did our first brainstorming on Sportlyzer design and guess what – our great new whiteboard was a total FAIL. Whiteboard marker came of only with white spirit and the next day it didn’t come off at all.
But we didn’t give up and started looking for an alternative. Our UI designer Kalmer said, they had a kapaplast whiteboard at his last workplace. Quick enquiry showed that 3×1,5m sheet of coplast is remarkably more expensive (81 Euros) than vinyl, but still cheaper than the small whiteboard in the shop.
This time we did a preliminary study and took a small piece of coplast for testing. Test was successful and we bought it. Transport and montage took us 1 hour and voila – our whiteboard is up and IT WORKS.
Coplast whiteboard.
If you’ve got a better version/idea about how to make a cheap startup whiteboard, would you please SHARE IT WITH US?
How to make a startup whiteboard?
What a startup definitely needs is a WHITEBOARD. It supports your brainstorming and keeps important things always in sight of the team.
Thus, the very moment we moved into our office, we started looking for a whiteboard. In a stationery shop we could get a small metal plate for a lot of money . And that was definitely not something we were looking for, because we had imagined a huge whiteboard for a little money.
So we decided to do a whiteboard ourselves. On our request guys from a printing company kindly tried a whiteboard marker on their vinyl material they use for making banners. And for our delight the response was that it was possible to wipe the marker off. We bought 5 meters of vinyl material for 15 Euros, borrowed an electric drill and screwed the vinyl on our office wall. It was a real dream come true – almost the whole wall was now our whiteboard.
Photo
We did our first brainstorming on design and guess what – our great new whiteboard was a total FAIL. Whiteboard marker came of only with white spirit and the next day it didn’t come off at all.
But we didn’t give up and started looking for an alternative. Our UI designer Kalmer said, they had a kapaplast whiteboard at his last workplace. Quick enquiry showed that 3×1,5m sheet of coplast is remarkably more expensive (81 Euros) than vinyl, but still cheaper than the small whiteboard in the shop.
This time we did a preliminary study and took a small piece of coplast for testing. Test was successful and we bought it. Transport and montage took us 1 hour and voila – our whiteboard is up and IT WORKS.
Photo
If you’ve got a better version/idea about how to make a cheap startup whiteboard, would you please share it with us?
Melamiinplaat? http://www.eektrade.ee/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=18
Valge pleksiklaas (PMMA) http://www.lexplast.ee/index.php?lang=est&main_id=57
Comment by Oss — August 31, 2010 @ 16:51
For $13 USD, we got a 122cm x 244cm panel of Melamine at our local home supply store. They even cut it into 3 equally-sized smaller boards for us for free.
Comment by Charlie Park — August 31, 2010 @ 17:19
Thank you for sharing your experience. At last we got pictures of our whiteboards also up.
Discussion stays open. Anyone got a good suggestion for a cheap and practical whiteboard, please leave a comment to share it with others.
Comment by tonis — September 21, 2010 @ 10:30
I tried vinyl once, but ended up with the same problem – it gets dirty pretty quickly. Bought kapaplast from Proplastik (3mm kapaline 1000×1400) today 1×1.4 m but the whiteboard marker does not come off from it at all
(( At least – it wasn’t expensive (4€) and works well as a projection screen
What is the exact type of the material? Some code or smth would be helpful.
Comment by Indrek Saul — October 4, 2010 @ 13:50
Hi, Indrek,
We used 5mm Coplast AS-X 1500X3050. Check also what others here have suggested (melamine, white plexi glass).
Cheers,
Tõnis
Comment by Tõnis Saag (Sportlyzer) — October 5, 2010 @ 00:03