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making your own playing cards, sum it up

8 replies [Last post]
Thu, 11/24/2005 - 06:52
johant
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Joined: 12/31/1969

Could someone pleaze sum up how to do your own cards!

Lets say that you have made a design of your cards in a program (Which program do you use?)

They are about 45*65 mm and you have them as a file, then what?

Whats the stages and how do you take them from there to the gaming table in a cheap and good way?

They should be laminated, and if possible with round edges.

I have seen cards fors sale at spiele material
http://www.muecke-hotelberatung.de/english/

BUT are they laminated and is it really a smart way to go to buy these cards and to put your design etc on these cards.

Sorry if this question seems stupid, but I really need a simple explanation of what to do and what the most crucial steps are!

Thanks
Johan

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Thu, 11/24/2005 - 08:56
#1
Sebastian
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Joined: 07/27/2008
Re: making your own playing cards, sum it up

johant wrote:
Could someone pleaze sum up how to do your own cards!

The method that I use is to:

a) Design them in CoralDraw. My usual size is 50 x 69, because that gives me sixteen cards on one sheet.

b) Print them onto a piece of white cardboard

c) Cut them out with a pair of scissors

This produces a set of cards which is good for about 20 plays or so. In practice, they will rarely be used for that long, because I'll work out some refinement, and redesign the set.

...

For games which use only number cards, or for very quick and dirty alpha playtests, I use cards from other games. Sticheln is a good game to steal from because it has oodles of card number in six different suits.

...

Another popular method is to print onto pieces of paper, and put these into CCG card holders (usually with junk CCG cards as backing).

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Thu, 11/24/2005 - 09:08
#2
Nandalf
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Joined: 07/13/2009
making your own playing cards, sum it up

lol yup, i once printed 96 cards out on stickyback paper, and stuck them onto old pokemon cards :D
but the last set of cards i made, i just printed the fronts out on plain paper [arranged them using publisher, they were 8.5x6.5] and then made backs, printed them on some more stickyback paper [got loads lol] and stuck a back on every singe card.
was ok tho, it took 12 hours to completely come up with the idea, design it and make it!

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Thu, 11/24/2005 - 09:30
#3
TrollBasher
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Joined: 12/31/1969
making your own playing cards, sum it up

Well I guess I can tell you what I ended up doing for the prototype stage.

1. Designed the cards in Photoshop. These are the templates I will use to create each card. (Your going to change the deisgn of the cards so many times that it's going to drive you crazy, so never print them all out at the same time).

2. Found some illustrations. I used images found arount the net and a few I made using Poser. You can't obvisuley use these in the finished game but they really give you a feel for how the cards will look.

3. Print out the cards. To start with I just use paper. I cut out the cards and then place them inside the card sleeves (see through plastic sleeves). When the cards are ready you can move on to priting the cards on glossy card instead of paper. I always use the card sleeves, however, because it makes shuffling the cards so much easier.

It's good to learn from your mistakes, but it's even better to learn from the mistakes of others. Hope I've been of some help.

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Thu, 11/24/2005 - 10:00
#4
Johan
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Joined: 10/05/2008
making your own playing cards, sum it up

johant wrote:
Could someone pleaze sum up how to do your own cards!

Lets say that you have made a design of your cards in a program (Which program do you use?)

I use different programs when I do cards for my games. It always depend on what the result should be.
I always have the same size of the cards (25/A4, 16/A4 and 9/A4).
A 25/A4 size is small cards where I have 5x5 cards on each A4 size paper. A 16/A4 is a 4x4 (it will be cards as half sized playing cards) and 9/A4 (3x3) is normal playing cards. Everything with standard margins (equally distributed on the sides so I can print on both sides with minimum of bleed).
The cards are placed side by side (no spacing between the cards (easier to cut)).
I always do a template and a sample card before I create the cards.

Programs: you should always select a program where you can move the objects around on the screen. An ordinary drawing program (without layers) is hard to use. Here is some program examples on programs that I have used.

PowerPoint: I have found that PP fulfills the needs for a quick card mockup. The major drawback is that the program not have layer handling.
Word: Some people like to make cards in word. I'm not one of them. I prefer PP.
Visio: I have used it but can not recommend anyone to make counters and cards in Visio. Its to complicated to get everything right.
Illustrator: I normally do counters and game boards in Illustrator. If I want to do I page of cards, Illustrator can be used but Illustrator can not handle several pages at the same time (I have not find a way).
Corel Draw: Same vector handling as Illustrator and has layers. The big advantage is that you can handle several pages at the same time.
InDesign: Absolutely the best program. You have layer handling and template handling.

Quote:

Whats the stages and how do you take them from there to the gaming table in a cheap and good way?

They should be laminated, and if possible with round edges.

Depending on what you are using the cards for. I would advice you to invest in a cutting machine (it will speed up the cutting of cards). A cold laminator is not necessary but if you are going to have the prototype tested several times (before remaking it) then you should laminate the cards.
Most printers can handle 170 g paper. I use those and they work fin. Another way it to print the card on standard paper and put them into cards sleeves.

Quote:

I have seen cards fors sale at spiele material
http://www.muecke-hotelberatung.de/english/

BUT are they laminated and is it really a smart way to go to buy these cards and to put your design etc on these cards.

Never used and never needed.

// Johan

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Thu, 11/24/2005 - 11:27
#5
larienna
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Joined: 07/28/2008
making your own playing cards, sum it up

The size of the cards will of course varry according to the size of the cards. Cards which are almost the same size than a MTG or yu-gi-oh card can be printed in groups of 9 cards per sheet.

Round edge is a good idea, it prevent corner damage.

If you want your files ready to print in PDF, use a printer emulator software like cute PDF, that can take any printer output and place it in a PDF.

If you are making double sided cards, it is a bit more complicated. Consider that 2 different printing will never print at the same place. So if your front and back of cards have borders they will never match. The best solution is to make the back of the card have borders and the front of the card, have floating text in empty space. You cut the card according to the back of the cards.

Else, you will have to use the folding method. Draw both side on the same sheet. Leave a tiny space line between the 2 cards. Fold and glue them.

You must also leave some empty space at the bottom of the sheet since most printer does not print on the bottom. By the way is another thread(which I wrote) wheresomebody submited a picture with the dimentions on how to format a sheet to make sure it prints letter and A1 format paper.

For protecting the cards permanently, there is 2 methods I use.

- Use autoadhesive transparent plastic for book cover. Stick the cards on the plastic and cut it along the border.

- Use plastic sleeves. If you want to seal them, use a plastic bag sealer( to seal food bags) and cut the side and the top. They will now be sealed. Use a need to make a hole in the top coner of the plastic to remove the air and make the card flat.

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Thu, 11/24/2005 - 14:51
#6
seo
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Joined: 07/21/2008
making your own playing cards, sum it up

I guess you mean this post

Seo

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Sat, 11/26/2005 - 16:36
#7
Oracle
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Joined: 06/22/2010
making your own playing cards, sum it up

I like Avery 5147 labels for my card prototyping.

They're about 1/16" (2mm) smaller than a poker sized playing card, so it's pretty much perfect.

The labels come 2/sheet on a 4x6" sheet (perfect for printers with a dedicated photo tray), and cost about $4 for a pack of 100 labels.

For the base material, dollar stores usually sell cheap quality decks of cards for 50 cents. I prefer using bicycle cards though, they're much higher quality and costco sells a box of 12 decks for $13.

The result shuffles and handles like a normal deck, since it's just a normal deck with a label on each card.

You can, of course, do fronts and backs by using 2 labels per card if you want.

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Thu, 12/01/2005 - 14:41
#8
Anonymous
designing cards

I went the old fashioned way.Since I didn't have a computer at the time and then I did get one I still tried paint program and the excel program but it wasnt what I was looking for.

I picked up a few booklets of graph paper from Cambridge. If you have tons of patience and time or can make time this setup can keep you out of trouble with friends and family. lol It took me 1 year and 7 months to hand cut the cards 9 squares wide and 14 squares in length for a total of 16,126 cards. I used a yugioh card to identify the size I was looking for.

Like I said if you have patience and can make time and like getting into your projects this is the setup. But if you have all that fancy program stuff this setup will bore the heck out of you.

For other games I have used note cards I forget what they are at the moment but they come in 100 cards per stack. Anyways if you want to decks I cut one card in half and then took the card that was in half and the cut out the rest of the note cards the same length. These cards are excellent for drawing and laminating. The game i designed for kids and every family member for was such a blast. I drew up pipe shapes large enough to go from one edge to the next. And I colored each for bright texture. Red, Blue,Green and Orange. Ever one has this pipe screensaver one their computers. So what I did was design a game from that. My oldest daughter at 4 was beating me out of my own game. lol cute kid. I also designed other elements of the game to. Like wall cards, Freeze cards, Fire cards and Bomb cards all with their counter part colors. There were 100 cards for each deck. And the neatest thing about this game is that no two were a like.Since I didnt add the rules and movement you can let your imagination run wild with that game. It was crazier with 4 players playing at the same time. Blocking each opponent to gain more points. Then there was a second game or actually new cards with 4 locations like trying to start up your community by linking up your areas with the same cards with the pipes. There were no areas to put your locations at so it was really cool to see where you put your locations at and connect the pipes for water would goto.

BullDog

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