Designer Kit of Top Board Game Manufacturer - WinGo Games
As the leading card game printer, we receive piles of inquiries about how to make card games every day. Most of these friends are enthusiast of printing game cards. They like playing card games at the very beginning. As their experience and knowledge grow, their desires to print custom playing cards become even stronger. Even most of them have finished the matching up of the rule ideas and game ideas, but as new card game publishers or designers most of them find themselves stuck in the artwork of card game design.
If you want to make your own card games or create your own card game, it is definitely important to go through the whole page. As the premier game card maker, WinGo Games will navigate you to the whole process of making playing card. We will guide you from the view of a professional card maker. Whatever you are new publishers or designers, after reading this instruction you will have very clear ideas on how to make a game card or how to make card game.
Basic requirements for Artwork designs
1. Make sure your play cards design artwork is in CMYK color.
This is to avoid huge difference from your imagination. Most new card game publishers or game card designers haven’t confronted with such issues before. Though the card game design artwork in RPG colors look very nice, it simply cannot be achieved due to the actual playing card print limitation. If any card game printers never mentioned about it with you, then it is not a qualified card maker. To avoid disappointment, just keep in mind CMYK is the printing color which is the most closet colors to your actual finished custom printed card.
2. Make sure your game cards printing image is with 300ppi or higher.
This is to make sure all your customized printed cards to meet the clarity of your expectation. The lower the image resolution is, the worse clarity it will be. Terrible clarity will definitely harm the playing experiences of your personalized card game end users.
3. Better to offer your customized printing card game design in PDF or AI format.
Though PSD, JPG, PNG, PDF and TIF files are also acceptable, it may bring many obstacles due to specification, parameter setting, color difference and etc.. AI format offers the convenience to amend all the discrepancies of your customized printing.
4. Make sure to clarify your card game designs in the correspondence folders according to your spec sheet.
This can save many unnecessary time wasting of communication while you are handling the playing cards custom printing process with your card game printers.
5. Make sure all the texts and font is embedded and revisable.
Before the card game printing, a qualified game card printer will also help to check if any typos in the card game design. It will be high effective to fix the typos if necessary.
6. Make sure your die cuts to be vector illustration and in different layers.
As new publishers or designers who want to make your own card games successfully in the first time. You’d better offer more space for your custom card printers to fix the problems existed.
Now that you have a clear understanding about your card game print design. We will further share about the card size and shape, paper options, prototyping and production, surface treatment, die-cutting & packaging and shipping.
1. Custom Playing Card Printing Size and Shape.
Basically speaking, there is no limitation about the custom printed cards size and shape. However, putting the actual need, cost and consumption wastage, there are some comply used sizes, such as bridge cards (57x89mm), poker cards (63x89mm), mini cards (44x67mm) and tarot cards (70x120mm). As a leading card game printer, WinGo can provide nearly 30 basic card sizes for different purpose of customized playing cards. So if you want to make your own personalized playing cards, you can contact with our teams for more information about your need.
Regarding the shape, there are also no limitation, but commonly used shapes are squares and circles. Making your own card is easy, but learning how to make a cost-effective card game is the key to success. A competent custom card printer like us WinGo will supervise you to master the production cost of manufacturing card game. So to make the best output of the customized cards shape, you may check with the game card printers to see if there has already been some models can best match the needs based on the characteristics of your customized playing card games.
Available models are offerred free and can thus greatly save production cost. Of course, if your custom printing cards size or shape is functionally limited, you can also pay for customized moulds. Whatever custom playing cards printing size and shape is decided, a bleeding area is a must. You make check attached the card maker templates for details. Now you have a more clear idea on how to make your own cards games with size and shape, we will show you the paper options in the second part.
2. Paper Options.
There are many paper options for custom card printing. In case you are confused of them. Here to introduce some commonly used options for custom printing cards. WinGo provides 300g/350g/400g double copper paper, 300g/310g black core paper, 300g blue core paper, and 300g grey core paper. How to figure out which paper option is good for your personalized playing cards? It is simple to judge from their stiffness and thickness. Ranking from the thickness is 310g black core paper>350g double bond paper>300g double bond paper>300g black core paper=300g blue core paper>300g grey core paper.
Chose the right paper option according to your custom print cards purpose. Generally speaking, thicker cards are suitable for game characters, hints and game scenes or used in other occasions that do not require frequent shuffling while the softer and more flexible 300g black core, blue core, and grey core paper are more suitable for cards that require repeated shuffling such as skill cards or resource cards. Of course, in addition to the above mentioned papers, there still have many flashcards are often used for collection and have certain commemorative meanings. Besides PVC customized playing cards that are waterproof, dirt-resistant and not easy to wear out are getting more and more popular.
In short, different papers are of different cost. You may fully communicate with the card game manufacturer before your game card printing, and choose according to the characteristics of your customized playing cards game. Now that you have decided your custom print cards’ size, shape and paper. It is time to bring your custom playing cards to prototyping and production.
3. Prototyping and Production.
Deviation implies incorrectness. It’s more likely to cause a color deviation when using a large area of plain color than multicolor patterns or illustrations in artwork design. Once you have confirmed the play cards design artwork, card size and shape, paper option, the game card maker will firstly arrange a prototyping for you to check the finished printing custom cards. Once you have approved them, there will come the production closely.
However, printing playing cards is more than grabbing a bundle of cards and pulling it out from the machines. In fact, before producing your custom playing card, the cards will be arrayed on one page in computers by engineers through software. Let’s call it artwork printing check sheet (APCS). It looks simple and triple but it is an error-prone task. Therefore, before publishing and printing, WinGo must review the APCS to ensure that the number of cards and the artwork used is consistent with your needs. Our chief card game printing technician will manage and adjust the printing process from A to Z. APCS will be taken out frequently for color checking to ensure the color stability of your custom playing card.
Therefore, before mass production, WinGo will advise you to make a set of APCS to ensure the accuracy of color output and provide references to game card printers when adjusting printing parameters. Excited or not, you are closer to how to make your own game cards. In the following step, we will guide you how to make game cards surface treatment.
4. Surface treatment.
Owing to the purpose of custom playing cards, they must have smooth and wear out resistant surface. WinGo innovatively invent several specially formulated poker oils to fulfill these requirements. It looks not only shinier, but also supply certain protection for your personalized playing cards. It makes your printed playing card looks more brilliant and attractive. Although it is a fully automated process, the card game printing technicians in charge of it must be highly experienced too. The viscosity of the poker oil, speed of the machine, temperature and pressure must be well controlled to ensure that all cards are consistent in touch.
Another way to make your own game card more attractive is adding lines. This treatment will further improve the texture of your customized playing cards. Lines adding will be applied after poker oil treatment. Steel shaft presses lines to the surface of your customized playing card through machine roller. Lines and texture on cards make your printing custom cards more attractive and enhance the touching handfeel. It is a good option to improve players playing experience.
There are more special treatments such as foil stamping or partial UV oil application (partial glazing), etc., which will make your game card printing more dazzling and more personalized. Of course, the more complex the treatment is the higher cost it will be. You can refer to your card game printers when necessary. Happy or not, your custom playing cards printing comes to die-cutting and packaging process.
5. Die-cutting and Packaging
After the surface treatment process, your custom playing cards printed will be cut out one by one and stacked up in the predetermined order by machine and manual card picking. The embryonic form of your game card printing is already out, but the edges and corners are not the final status required.
Even a mini defect of handling the edges and corners of your custom playing cards printed can be a disaster which makes your card game look cheap. It looks simple but actually an extremely significant process. A process obvious enough to reflect WinGo’s pursuit of quality and professionalism. A key point to show WinGo as the leading card game maker of the first batch of China manufacturer. How to control the accuracy of cutting and how to ensure the correctness of the sum of cards constitute a strict test for manufacturer’s control process.
It is also a production stage that ordinary card game printers cannot finely handle. After manual picking of your printing custom playing cards, through a specified hydraulic die-cutting machine together with a sharp steel mould, the game cards will be cut into the correct shape. Smooth edges and rounded corners of the cards are sure to be welcomed by players.
Finally
After all the above processes completed, technicians will put your custom printing cards in a plastic bag of appropriate size before they are heat-sealed by machine and sent to the oven conveyor belt for heat shrinking and plastic sealing, so that the cards will not be scattered. At the same time, this process can effectively isolate moisture and dust to ensure the quality of your custom playing cards.
The next step is quality inspection and assemble cards into boxes together with other accessories before packaging. Now that the entire card game production process of your custom print cards has been completed. Your playing cards custom printing order will be shipped as per requirement.
For those who would like to make your own card game or have no idea on how to make card games, this card game designer kit will surely guide your through. To help more and more new publishers and new designers into the card game industry, as the worldwide leading card game maker, we even invent a hard copy of card game designer kit. You may contact WinGo at info@wingogames.com to get more help from us. We look forward to being your long-term partner as you create great card games.