Printing Up Prototypes for Hackronyms

Look What Arrived in the Mail

With the general rules of Hackronyms pretty much settled (and having glued cards back together more times than I can remember), I decided to create printed versions of my cards. I had the cards already designed in vector format, as sheets of two by four cards, so I figured the transfer over wouldn’t be that hard.

I set out to find a printer.

A while back, I had seen this post by Michael at Ruby Cow Games. Impressed by how the cards looked and the shipping time, I decided to give Printer Studio a go.

I first chose the type of cards I wanted to print. Seeing that most of the options only allowed for one side to be printed, I eventually settled on blank, custom, poker-sized cards. I chose to go with linen even though the cost was a little bit more. (I’m not sure how the smooth cards feel but they look great for Monster Zoo. More on the durability of my cards later too.)

After settling these details, I created an account with Printer Studio, and proceeded to upload my images. The exported images I had for my cards weren’t exactly the right size, so I scaled them up and re-exported them.

The process was pretty effortless.

The biggest pain point was probably assigning different images to their respective card slots. This process involved dragging uploaded images into different spots on the screen. Almost as quickly as I had started, though, I was done. My order was finished.

The order was submitted on January 3rd. I received an email on January 10th that the order had “been shipped on January 11,2014” and that I would receive the cards in seven business days with an estimated arrival date of January 21st.

I didn’t record the exact day I received my shipment, but I remember the estimate being pretty accurate. Excited to receive my cards, I did a mini photo shoot, which you can see below:

There's a Lot of Space Left

Version 1.0 Cards... Looking Good!

Version 1.0 of the Skip and Reverse Cards

The Cards Laid Out in the Box

The cards arrived via USPS, shrink-wrapped, with a decent amount of extra space in the box. There were a few cards that had a few pixels of coloration missing from them, but the colors were, otherwise, how I had them when I saved them as pngs. The cards were very durable. The linen definitely also made it feel like something you wanted to play with more.

All in all, I’m impressed by the cards and would recommend others get their prototypes printed with them. Their price is great and the usage of these cards, thus far, has been amazing.

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