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Kristinn, you obviously know all there is to know about making great signs for pennies that are large enough and high enough to be easily read and understood from across many lanes of traffic - so this is for other Freepers who want to get their feet wet in this arena .... Freepers who see a Leftist street-side protest near where they live, and are just *ITCHING* to go out and counter-Freep it, and don't know how.

So, some tips on sign-making for Freeper Streetside activists .....

Paper: Many Windows apps out there let you stretch the size of the image out to several feet across, and then when you print it out to an ordinary 8.5x11 printer, they automatically split it up into "tiles" that each fit onto an 8.5x11 sheet. So then you pull, let us say, 12 printed sheets out of the printer (=4 by 3 tiles), which you can then assemble into one large poster.
Assembly: Each sheet of paper will either need 2 or 1 or 0 edges trimmed off their blank margins; you'll figure out which. Paper cutters are quickest, but scissors do the job too. On a table top, tape each of the inner rows together first, using the tiniest amount of tape possible in case something needs re-alignment.
If you're doing this in color, first print it out on the cheapest-ink B&W printer you have, to detect any possible roadblocks *before* you print the final version with more expensive ink. And if you're making your own signs with your own text using some easily-learned graphics app, and you want to save on black printer ink while in the testing stage, use hollow fonts. You can change them to regular filled fonts at the end. Or if your black ink is REALLY expensive (eg only an inkjet printer rather than a B&W laser printer), just print them out in hollow-font, and after assembly, color them in (if needed) with sharpie markers of your color-choice ... a cheaper ink but more labor.
Sign backing: Use any leftovers from large cardboard boxes in your home or from behind furniture stores or other smaller stores that sell large items. (Big box stores these days tend to crush all cardboard before it's hauled out the back door).
Getting it up high in the air is easy to do! Buy a 1" by 2" by 8-ft "Furring Strip" from any H/W store. And you'll find that it's trivial to make a sign + signpost combo that's easy to fit in *any* car (eg the VW Golf I used to drive), carry to the protest location, and instantly re-assemble when you arrive. Having a sign that's almost one storey taller than the opposition's means you never worry about traffic blocking the view of your Free Speech. And you never have to worry when there's no enforced separation between the two sides, and some of the opposition try to position themselves and their signs to block the view of your signs from the street.
What I found works well is cut the cardboard *higher* than needed by at least 4" (12" or more is OK too), so the top edge can be folded back behind the sign. Then you use an old coat hanger and a pliers to bend & cut it with, to make a loop of wire in a rectangular shape that goes all the way through both the folded-over part and the main part of the sign, at least 3" down from the top of the sign. The rectangle's width should be just large enough that the furring strip can slide right in there.
If you're in a hurry, this is sufficient. But I found it's a lot more stable - especially in winds - to secure the bottom of the sign to the furring strip as well. Just make a 2nd rectangular loop from coat hanger wire to place at the bottom of the sign. So when you assemble the sign at the counter-protest location, you thread the furring strip first thru the bottom wire loop behind the sign, and then up to thread thru the wire loop that's hidden under the folded top of the sign.

I remember printing up a bunch of these that way back in the day. Good times!

"... using the tiniest amount of tape possible in case something needs re-alignment."

Should have added after this, that once the entire poster is assembled on the table and aligned properly, you then need to add more tape, especially at corners where 4 tiles meet, to hold the thing together. For how much tape to use at the edges to make it stick to the cardboard, take into account which edges will be moving if it's a windy day.