# A grid is how you draw giving something away > Twenty identical booklets in a grid, some filled in and some left as outlines — a way of showing that a portion of a print run was never meant to be sold. August 21, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/the-free-copies-you-gave-away Twenty identical booklets, five across and four down, each a plain rectangle with a stapled spine. Most sit as empty outlines. A handful are filled solid, scattered through the grid rather than grouped, in two inks that don't quite match. Nothing else is drawn. The grid does all the counting. ## Why draw a grid instead of just saying some copies were given away? Because a grid lets the reader see the proportion instead of being told a number for it. Twenty identical shapes, arranged evenly, turn "some were given away" into something the eye can weigh at a glance. A sentence has to commit to a figure or stay vague; a grid can show a portion without pretending to be precise about which fraction it is. That's the real limit of the information here — the picture shows a portion of the run went out free, not a count of it. ## Why are the filled-in booklets scattered rather than grouped together? Because giving a copy away is a decision made once, to one person, not a single decision applied to a block of the run. If the filled shapes sat together in one corner, the grid would read as a set-aside pile — copies reserved in advance for some general purpose. Scattered irregularly through the grid instead, they read as what they actually were: a handful of separate choices, made at separate moments, to particular people who asked or who mattered to the person handing them out. ## Why are the filled booklets in two different inks rather than one? Because they likely weren't all given away for the same reason, or at the same time. Two inks reads as two separate occasions rather than one uniform run of free copies — a few handed to whoever helped make the thing, and a few more handed out later, to somebody who couldn't pay, or turned up without one. Not every one of those was strictly free, either: [a copy exchanged for something other than money](/stories/the-price-that-was-or-trade) can end up filled in on this same grid, since nothing about a rectangle here records what changed hands for it. The grid doesn't specify which is which. It just records that copies left the run more than once, in more than one way. ## Can I use a grid like this for my own print run? Yes — a grid of identical shapes is a format, and the proportion it shows is yours to set. Nothing here reproduces a specific real object beyond a plain rectangle with a stapled spine, which belongs to no one. What would need separate permission is copying somebody else's actual cover design onto the shapes. Your own count, your own proportion of the grid filled in, is the version that's actually about your own print run. ## Does this work for something given away in a different form — a badge, a sticker, a ticket? Yes — any small object made in a fixed run and partly given away rather than sold follows the same shape. The grid just needs enough repeated units that the filled ones read as a portion rather than a handful of exceptions. Twenty is a workable number because it's countable at a glance without feeling sparse. Fewer than that and the proportion stops reading; the specific object drawn in each cell matters less than the grid holding enough of them. ## Isn't giving copies away just a print run failing to sell out? Not when it's decided in advance rather than discovered afterwards. A copy that doesn't sell after being offered for sale is a different event from a copy set aside from the start, before it was ever priced. The scattered filled shapes here read as the second kind — choices made about who gets one, not stock that failed to move. It's different again from [copies placed with a shop on terms where nothing is owed until they sell](/stories/ten-copies-sale-or-return), which are still for sale, just not yet paid for. [The unsold remainder that never found a buyer is its own separate box](/stories/the-box-under-the-bed), and it looks nothing like this grid. ## Does it print well? Yes — it's a two-value grid at heart, which is about as forgiving as a print gets. Cream as the ground keeps the outlines and the two fill inks legible without competing for attention. The rectangles are flat shapes with hard edges, so nothing in the grid depends on fine line work — the whole design would still read correctly reduced to a quarter of its size, which is a good sign for how it'll sit on fabric. ## How do I get one made? Describe the grid at [JustOG](/) — how many were made, and how the given-away portion is marked. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped. Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop). Nobody counted the filled squares before deciding to hand them out.