Whatever the board game companies or designers all want to custom board games successfully. However, what is the priority to make a board game sucessful? According to WinGo Games’ plentiful board game manufacturing experience with hundreds of successful publishers and board game companies, such as Pegasus, Hobby world, Happy shop etc., making your custom board game with the standard of ideal boyfriends or girlfriends is the key to success. That means appearance-attractive must go first. Putting to the board game, it is exactly the artwork design.
Artwork design of custom board game goes first.
The art of board game is open, varied and graceful just like the history of the world. Western art styles at different times and artistic genres of various nations are delicately fused in board game art. Board game art embraces extreme simplicity using sophisticated art elements. Every board game designer has their art preference for producing, but the truth is the board game factories have their way of making things done too! Therefore a lot of talented card game artists and board game designers suffer a lot as their work has to be constantly adjusted, re-polished and tweaked. Sometimes they finally come out with a masterwork, but it is subjected to production conventions too. In such case, as an experienced manufacturer of board games, here we share some common rules for board game manufacturing.
1. Use CMYK colour mode for all drawings.
Unlike RGB’s luminous colour mode, CMYK is a mainstream printing colour mode based on the reflective effect, using cyan, magenta, yellow and black to mix these four basic colours into a colourful printing image. This can ensure that the colour entered people’s eyes is correct under the light.
2.
The image resolution should not be less than 300PPI.
300PPI is the minimum accuracy standard for printing. In board game printing, PPI can only be higher but not lower. Otherwise, you will see jagged mosaics everywhere. More specifically, PPI (pixels per inch) is the pixel density per square inch. Typically，images used on the Web should be 72PPI while printing requires at least 300PPI.
3. The format of drawing should be PDF/AI.PPI.
PDF or AI format is the best when the designer’s art files are delivered to the board game manufacturing factory. Different computer environments will lead to the confusion of various layers and fonts when the files are opened. The board game factory needs a PDF or AI format to ensure that the art can be printed as it is.
(Manufacturer of board games can also accept PSD, JPG, TIF, etc., but if any problem arose or adjustment is needed, both parties will get stuck in repeated revision).
4.
The documents shall be placed in the folder with corresponding parts number
according to the “ specification”.
Board game esigners tend to sort art documents by the time they are generated, but if the board games manufacturing factory neglects each board game or card game designer’s unique sorting habits, a batch of misprints will be produced. Board game maker certainly doesn’t want to pay for these errors. Therefore each board game or card gam designer needs to drop his or her habit of placing art files and put them in an appropriate folder in the factory’s typical pattern.
5. All text and fonts must be embeded.
The fonts of the art document will change because of the different font database in each computer. To ensure the original font and text used by the designer can play to their full effect, we have to ask designers to crank their text into curve graphics because the factory can not guarantee that it happens to have the same font from its database.
6.
Die-cut must be a vector and
on a separate layer.
Game board die-cut generally refers to the cutting line that marks the shape of the chip, token or customized shape of cardboard. When making a vector, please put it on a separate layer so that the factory can directly output the correct shape and size of the required cutting die. There’s no need to draw again. Die-cut helps avoid errors and dramatically saves time.
7.
Black is preferred for text and borders
(C:0% M:0% Y:0% K100%)
The advantage of single black compared to mixed black (C:96% M:70% Y:46% K:86%) is that it is not easily affected by another colour in the card game printing process.
When adjusting the colour of red, yellow, and blue, the colour black will not change thus highly ensuring colour uniformity. This advantage is quite obvious when the game card or token uses black as borders. Single black used on the text can avoid problems like fuzzy text which is caused by the error in the card game printing process and affects normal reading. After all, using a single black is much more accurate than managing four different colour versions. Also, if the same background is applied only with different descriptions in large number, single black can save cost in production!
8.
Bleeding line and margin line are reserved 3mm
outside and inside of the edge of the design.
The board game manufacturing factory never cuts precisely in card game printing. Even if there is one accurate, it will be just a coincidence. Therefore, to ensure there are no discernible differences between the board game design work and the actual products, board game manufacturer will ask board game designers to make two auxiliary lines such as knife mould line and residual line to ensure the pattern of the card will not be damaged when cutting is not accurate.
In summary, just like a relationship between man and woman, appearance attractive is always the priority. So in order to ensure your custom board game to be a great success. It will never be too strict to design your board game artwork. Subscribe to WinGo Games Newsletter to know more about board game manufacturing.