Calligraphy studios designing street placards, the traditional canvassing method for candidates, are swamped with orders. Mohammed Ahmed, who owns such a studio in downtown Cairo, said the price for one-and-a-half dozen words of text increased almost threefold to 150 Egyptian pounds ($25). Work goes on virtually around the clock.
Illustrators drawing decal portraits of the "eternally young" President Hosni Mubarak, 77, who is running for a fifth consecutive six-year term, and other candidates are glad to have so much work to do.
Stockrooms for white fabric, from which placards are made, are empty.
T-shirts with candidates' pictures are very popular, with some parties ordering thousands of them for their supporters. For example, there are the orange T-shirts of the Al-Ghad (Tomorrow) party, with the campaign's symbolic palm tree, and the yellow sleeveless shirts of the Kifaya (Enough) opposition movement.
Printing houses are not idle either. Three million copies of National Democratic Party candidate Mubarak's first campaign speech have been printed. The president, as well as his rivals, speaks daily and sometimes several times a day on the campaign trail around the 26 Egyptian provinces.
The Tomorrow party was the first to apply modern election technology, delivering SMSs to prompt subscribers of the country's two major cellular communication networks to vote for party leader Ayman Nour.
Official media, including TV channels, offer equal opportunities for candidates to present their platforms.
Islamic and Christian activists have also joined the campaign. Prominent Islamic clerics and head of the Coptic Church Pope Shenouda III urged their followers to vote for Mubarak.
These are the first contested presidential elections in the history of Egypt.
The election campaign will run until September 4, and millions of Egyptians will elect a new, or old, as some local experts predict, leader on September 7.
