Card sizes, bleed and sleeving

Anything related to dev. & that doesn't fit in below categories.
Post Reply
ngoeminne
Posts:324
Joined:Mon Feb 29, 2016 15:34
Card sizes, bleed and sleeving

Post by ngoeminne » Wed Nov 02, 2016 09:40

Hi folks,

The first proof prints where quite nice, but we face some cut issues.
The cards where cut a bit bigger then expected, 66 by 95, wile I asked for the 65 by 92 as set out in our wiki page about sizes. So they were not sleevable.

I manually cut some cards in 65 by 92. And they are not easily sleevable as well. They do fit but is really hard to get them in. Normally you put one corner of the card in the sleeve and then slide in the rest. That's not possible with the given size. You need to put in the card straight.

So, should we revise our desicion to not use the standard card sizes (63 by 88). Or reduce our custom size to 64 by 90. (I'll do a manual cut and see if the reduced size works).

Finally based on the desicion here. I'l change the templates inner content to support some more "bleed". It will take some effort to change the template sizes, but luckily once that is done the cards can be regenerated all at once.

So my question: custom size or standard size?

Kind regards,
Nico
Clemens
Posts:30
Joined:Sun Oct 23, 2016 21:03
Location:Austria

Re: Card sizes, bleed and sleeving

Post by Clemens » Wed Nov 02, 2016 17:23

Hi Nico,

my first instinct would be to go down in size, because of the sleeves.
That is for two reasons. First, if I buy "official" prints of the cards, I would like to sleeve them, to protect them and also to make the shuffling easier. Secondly I think a size that is easily sleevable would help players who want to craft the cards themselves. Because then they only have to worry about the card front and can ensure identical card backs through sleeving. It would also allow for more customizing of the deck (one could for example in a deck following the ARC sleeve the three starting cities in a different colour).
These are the reasons why I personally would suggest to go down in size. But I have to admit I haven't yet tried how that would affect the layout, which I will certanly do.

One thing I could suggest is to offer both sizes. The big size is there anyway, so if you decide to do a smaller version of the templates all cards could be generated in two different sizes. This would only have the overhead having to adjust (but not even recreate, I'd think) all the templates (if you ignore the occasional text going out of the box). As long as we have generated cards, that would be withoud a problem, and we could try out both versions in parallel. If we decide for the bigger version to be final and layouted, then we could keep generated cards in the database for players who want to craft sleevable cards, and if we ultimately decide for the smaller size, then there shouldn't even be a problem.
ngoeminne
Posts:324
Joined:Mon Feb 29, 2016 15:34

Re: Card sizes, bleed and sleeving

Post by ngoeminne » Thu Nov 03, 2016 21:08

Hi Clemens,

I also prefer sleevable cards, I did a manual cut on 64 by 90 and that works well.
It is about the biggest sleevable size possible. My current approach would be to scale down the current card to 63 by 89 and physically cut them on 64 by 90. So there is some extra padding between the logo, stats, footer and the cut. The print pdfs will have a 2 mm bleed, so the pdf's will measure 68 by 94.

I'd keep the png, and jpeg as is, so people can do whatever they want. (btw they have the generated source svg anyway).

I'm using imagemagic to convert to cmyk anyway, I could scale the print cards there so we wouldn't need to change the templates at all.

Kind regards,
Nico
User avatar
snowdrop
developer
Posts:798
Joined:Mon Feb 01, 2010 15:25
Location:Sweden
Contact:

Re: Card sizes, bleed and sleeving

Post by snowdrop » Sat Nov 05, 2016 18:19

Current stuff works
The size in the wiki was chosen because it works and was researched beforehand. ARC will go with any size you guys decided upon, but I don't get how the size of the cards is a problem and changing it a solution, when clearly the problem described is wrong measures delivered of the prints.

Adapting game to a printer
Now, one could of course offset and compensate material in order to "fix" whatever errors a printhouse is doing.

That would be doable by specific versions of the cards/pdf:s that are indeed generated by a simple script, where using Imagemagick or whatever would work for all of those operations I think. However, I myself wouldn't bother doing it, because that means that whenever a player wants to print the game, and he gets something that is wrong, he puts down work to create "compensating sources for printer x". If people are doing that, instead of fixing the real problem, then they collectively waste a lot of time, and there will also exist a lot of "source materials" out there in rotation with god knows how many different measures custom made for printers x y z et.c. all over the world. All in all, that will just be a total mess that I'd avoid.


About non-standard measure in wiki
Ultra Pro, possibly one of the largets manufacturer of sleeves in the world(?), carry standard sleeves that are 66 x 91 mm. These are as the name suggests, standard, and can be found anywhere. There are a million variants of those also.

From the wiki:

Ultra Pro - MTG Deck protectores - 66 x 91
Ultra Pro - Pro Premium Card Sleeve - 66 x 93
Ultra Pro - Card Sleeves (Penny Sleeves) - 66 x 93
Ultra Pro - Card Sleeves (Soft Sleeves) - 67 x 94
Ultra Pro - Clear Platinum Premium Card Sleeves - 65 x 94
Ultra Pro - Deck Protector - 66 x 91
FFG - Deck Protector - 63.5 x 88 - For FFG games like Arkham Horror, Cthulhu


In conclusion, I think the real discussion is more about compatibility with different sleeve brands than adjusting to an individual printer.

In ORC I won't change the measures since a) they can be printed correctly if prepared correctly and/or using a good printer, b) I don't foresee UltraPro or companies that create comparable sleeves vanishing from earth or changing their measures that they've had for decade(s) c) print area is maximized (even more so if one would have different templates, but let's not get into that now ; )

It would however be totally rational to change the measures, and in such a case to copy them and make them identical to MtG, to maximize compatibility with all makes of sleeves, should one think that e.g. UltraPro are expensive or rare.
ngoeminne
Posts:324
Joined:Mon Feb 29, 2016 15:34

Re: Card sizes, bleed and sleeving

Post by ngoeminne » Sat Nov 05, 2016 23:28

Hi snowdrop.

They indeed delivered the wrong sizes, however, that is not the issue. I manually cut the cards to the suggested size on our wiki(65 by 92) they will not fit in any of the sleeves you pointed out. The cards need a little margin to easily slide. So I did an other manual cut on 64 by 90, and those would fit in all of the listed sleeves.

Furthermore our templates do not offer any "bleed", (they do not offer padding on the borders, e.g. the logo is too near), except for manual cut, no production process cuts that precise.

Btw, we're not fixing anything the print service is doing wrong. That's the way things work, if you want a card on 64 by 90, you provide something that measures 68 by 94, and your content should fit in 63 by 89. Aditionally you put on some crop marks to indicate where they should cut.

Same goes for doing it yourself, you also want the bleed, and crop marks. So no the PDFs are not wrong they are what is needed to print and cut properly.

To conclude. Physical size should be 64 by 90 to maximise compatibility with most sleeve brands. Print templates should provide bleed. And that's what the generated PDFs do.

Kind regards,
Nico
User avatar
snowdrop
developer
Posts:798
Joined:Mon Feb 01, 2010 15:25
Location:Sweden
Contact:

Re: Card sizes, bleed and sleeving

Post by snowdrop » Sun Nov 06, 2016 00:06

that is not the issue. I manually cut the cards to the suggested size on our wiki(65 by 92) they will not fit in any of the sleeves you pointed out. The cards need a little margin to easily slide. So I did an other manual cut on 64 by 90, and those would fit in all of the listed sleeves.
1 mm should be enough space to slide the cards in a sleeve, but I guess that depends on the sleeve and how stiff it is, and on card paper thickness perhaps and how fiddly one prefers to be when sleeving. I haven't tried this recently, just know that I didn't have issues when I did try it out myself. However, I can't honestly say that I double checked the measures, so I am interested in doing that soon =)

Whatever works will do, as long as it maxes out the area.

Furthermore our templates do not offer any "bleed",
It did, in the Scribus stuff we had prepared by Qx. Should still be in dropbox, but we might have changed something in template etc since then. Don't recall, but he did it all correctly.

It is exactly as you describe, bleed is required and should be there. However, bleed can never be a part of a cards template itself. Bleed is something thats a part of the print-ready version of the game, and yeah, it needs to be there. This is semantics though = P
Post Reply