Thank you so much for making this guide. I have created a set of digital cards and have been researching ways of printing them for the past few days. While there is a well known professional board game printing company in my area, it turns out that even when factoring in shipping, launch lab is more cost effective than printing the cards at my local UPS store and far more cost effective than the printing company in my area which wouldn't even charge shipping and allow me to pick them up in person. I'm so glad that the most cost effective way to make these cards for the quantity that I want is also going to save me hours of printing troubleshooting, cutting, and corner clipping. I will definitely be checking out Canva to get the files to Launch Lab's specifications. Your tutorial is quite helpful. I have also been using Dextrous to design the cards. I find their free tool to be really helpful for creating a large number of different cards like you might find in a TCG or a card-heavy game like Wingspan or Terraforming Mars. It may be worth checking out if you haven't yet. Thanks again!!
Thank you for this video. Watched it a while ago and have finally been able to playtest quickly enough to get to something like an actual, usable, rule book, narrowing down components and everything. More than anything, it's helped me understand the scope of what I'm working on, and that's been a blessing
Nice. I quite like Dextrous or actually Figma for creating cards. Canva seems to be good at creating graphics but not something that takes in a lot of data. It also seems like its not good at changing the card design en mass after the fact.
Great video, thank you! I wish you made this 6 months ago haha. So I used Launch Tabletop to make a game (cards, tokens, board) for myself. I was a little 'off' with the placement of the graphics on the cards, and they were kind enough to point out my mistake and gave me to the opportunity to fix the files before they were printed. Top notch customer service, and I am grateful for that!!
I don't see how much of a help is that either in the game design phase, or as a final product. For both I'd see better solutions. For game design → write it / draw it / print it yourself at home and buy game card sleeves. Whenever you have to edit something, use Post-its cut and place inside the sleeve (there's not going to make any difference by hand, trust me). As for using Canva to create your final product → just avoid that. Your game will look cheap and gimmicky in no time, you'll regret that you made that decision ; for the love of your game, make friends along the way, talk to people, find a way to hire a real graphic designer. I hope that I don't sound too rude, Canva is fun for wandering around the features and maybe discover a few things. But no use for professional matter, ever (in my opinion).
I think you're missing one large group of designers - those who just want to make a really nice looking physical copy of their game for their own enjoyment. I've professionally printed card games in the past as gifts for friends and family with no intention of ever developing them further, or selling them. I've made card games to use when teaching. One of the examples in the video is a prototype game of mine, which I love, but for which I've struggled to find a publisher. I'm just delighted to have a high-quality copy for my own use. I also use this approach for final prototypes for pitching to publishers. It isn't necessary - you can pitch home-printed prototypes (and I frequently do) - but it's a really nice feeling handing a high quality professionally-printed prototype to a publisher. And even if it makes no difference to the eventual outcome of a pitch, in my experience it certainly catches attention. It also saves a lot of time cutting, stickering, printing and sleeving. When I'm pitching I tend to make around 5-7 copies of each prototype - usually preparing around 5-7 different games for a convention like Essen Spiel. That means handcrafting 25-50 games. I can't afford to print 25-50 games through a print-on-demand service, but producing a portion of them like this saves me a ton of time. I would rather pay more and get the time back. Home-crafting games isn't cheap either once mount-board, sticker paper, components, sleeves, printer ink etc are taken into account (cheaper than pro printing for sure, but the difference isn't as substantial as you'd think). I do agree with you about not using Canva for a commercial product. I think hiring a professional graphic designer is essential for that. And I wouldn't suggest that someone uses a professional printer for a game which is still undergoing playtesting. As you said yourself, Canva is fun :)
At the moment Launxh Tabletop only delivers directly to you, the designer. But I know they are working on a much more ambitious service where they can fulfil and distribute orders. I don’t know the timescale for that though.
Is there a way on canva to load a XLS and tag the text in order to populate the graphics? I found this function only on illustrator and the price for the license is too much for a prototype
I don’t know Federico! It may be possible - but it’s a bit too technical for me! :) I only know the basic functions. I know Canva can do a lot more things that I’ve discovered yet, so it might be worth exploring!
You can do this in nandeck - a little bit of a learning curve, but there are several examples you can copy from. I just took an pre-existing example and played around with it until it made sense. And its a free tool.
Affinity may have significantly more of a learning curve but I’m certain it is a more versatile product and can produce more professional results than Canva - so I don’t think it’s a bad decision! It all depends what you want to achieve. Quick and simple: Canva. Highly professional standard: Affinity :)
Thanks so much for this video! It's exactly what I needed as I've been trying to figure out how to take my home made prototype to the next level. I can’t wait for your box & rule sheet videos!
Thanks for this! Big dream to counterbalance my legal career with designing some card games and was just realizing I don’t know where to start with prototyping. Sounds like canva, the library printer, and card sleeves is a great start before I reach the pitching/launch tabletop phase. Appreciate all your extremely informative videos!
Hi Adam, thanks for the video. Totally agree about Canva. I've had a Pro account for a while now and appreciate the ease of use. I use it for marketing material, videos, and more. I'm working through my first game design and plan on trying Launch Lab. Any advice on the number of copies you typically order for playtesting? I'll be working with local gaming clubs/groups, taking copies to GenCon for their First Exposure room, etc. and want it to have a nicer look than hand drawn cards. Also, any other advice, tips & tricks, or thoughts on Launch Lab would be appreciated. Keep up the good work. Enjoy your day.
Hi - thanks for watching! Personally I wouldn’t order printed copies while still playtesting. During this phase, I want to be able to throw away and destroy/replace components freely - so I’d tend to keep my prototypes cheap and disposable. I order printed copies when I get to the pitching stage - to show to publishers. At that stage I would usually make 5-7 copies depending on how many publishers I’m approaching. During the playtesting phase, the number of copies needed depends entirely on your plans and process. I usually attend all my playtests (I don’t do them remotely) and I would rarely have more than one test running at a time. So one prototype is usually enough. Sometimes I make a second prototype for friends to take away and test with a wider group. This is especially useful if I’m working with a co-designer.
Very informative video. The crop tool in canva cuts some of the information (if the blue-green shape stands for information), I think you should try to resize the picture/text.
Yes, that’s true. It’s fine if you’re cutting off a pattern or block colour as a background, but wouldn’t work for an image where you wanted to retain all of it.
So after adding the box and instructions, what was the final cost? After you're happy with the prototype, how many do you print? What's the final price? How much do you sell them for? And where do you sell them? If you sell them online and ship them yourself, how do handle returns, damaged during delivery, missing cards, support, etc.? Where and how do you market your games?
Final cost with a tuck box was $18.03 + shipping. This reduces significantly when you order multiple copies. And discount code ADAMINWALES will give you 20% off. You can print as many as you like! I pitch my games to publishers so I tend to want a handful of copies (5-7?) to give as samples, but you could print hundreds if you were self publishing. These are all topics covered in a lot of detail in other videos on my channel :) I don't sell my prototypes - I license them to publishers. But you could sell direct to customers, or self-publish through Kickstarter etc. There is loads of information about how to do this online.
Thank you so much for making this guide. I have created a set of digital cards and have been researching ways of printing them for the past few days. While there is a well known professional board game printing company in my area, it turns out that even when factoring in shipping, launch lab is more cost effective than printing the cards at my local UPS store and far more cost effective than the printing company in my area which wouldn't even charge shipping and allow me to pick them up in person. I'm so glad that the most cost effective way to make these cards for the quantity that I want is also going to save me hours of printing troubleshooting, cutting, and corner clipping. I will definitely be checking out Canva to get the files to Launch Lab's specifications. Your tutorial is quite helpful. I have also been using Dextrous to design the cards. I find their free tool to be really helpful for creating a large number of different cards like you might find in a TCG or a card-heavy game like Wingspan or Terraforming Mars. It may be worth checking out if you haven't yet. Thanks again!!
Thank you for this video. Watched it a while ago and have finally been able to playtest quickly enough to get to something like an actual, usable, rule book, narrowing down components and everything. More than anything, it's helped me understand the scope of what I'm working on, and that's been a blessing
Nice. I quite like Dextrous or actually Figma for creating cards. Canva seems to be good at creating graphics but not something that takes in a lot of data. It also seems like its not good at changing the card design en mass after the fact.
Great video, thank you! I wish you made this 6 months ago haha.
So I used Launch Tabletop to make a game (cards, tokens, board) for myself. I was a little 'off' with the placement of the graphics on the cards, and they were kind enough to point out my mistake and gave me to the opportunity to fix the files before they were printed. Top notch customer service, and I am grateful for that!!
That’s great! They’ve done the same for me in the past :)
Launchlab shipping to the UK is still cheaper and better quality than the UK-based options in my experience so far.
I don't see how much of a help is that either in the game design phase, or as a final product. For both I'd see better solutions.
For game design → write it / draw it / print it yourself at home and buy game card sleeves. Whenever you have to edit something, use Post-its cut and place inside the sleeve (there's not going to make any difference by hand, trust me).
As for using Canva to create your final product → just avoid that. Your game will look cheap and gimmicky in no time, you'll regret that you made that decision ; for the love of your game, make friends along the way, talk to people, find a way to hire a real graphic designer.
I hope that I don't sound too rude, Canva is fun for wandering around the features and maybe discover a few things. But no use for professional matter, ever (in my opinion).
I think you're missing one large group of designers - those who just want to make a really nice looking physical copy of their game for their own enjoyment.
I've professionally printed card games in the past as gifts for friends and family with no intention of ever developing them further, or selling them. I've made card games to use when teaching. One of the examples in the video is a prototype game of mine, which I love, but for which I've struggled to find a publisher. I'm just delighted to have a high-quality copy for my own use.
I also use this approach for final prototypes for pitching to publishers. It isn't necessary - you can pitch home-printed prototypes (and I frequently do) - but it's a really nice feeling handing a high quality professionally-printed prototype to a publisher. And even if it makes no difference to the eventual outcome of a pitch, in my experience it certainly catches attention.
It also saves a lot of time cutting, stickering, printing and sleeving. When I'm pitching I tend to make around 5-7 copies of each prototype - usually preparing around 5-7 different games for a convention like Essen Spiel. That means handcrafting 25-50 games. I can't afford to print 25-50 games through a print-on-demand service, but producing a portion of them like this saves me a ton of time. I would rather pay more and get the time back. Home-crafting games isn't cheap either once mount-board, sticker paper, components, sleeves, printer ink etc are taken into account (cheaper than pro printing for sure, but the difference isn't as substantial as you'd think).
I do agree with you about not using Canva for a commercial product. I think hiring a professional graphic designer is essential for that. And I wouldn't suggest that someone uses a professional printer for a game which is still undergoing playtesting.
As you said yourself, Canva is fun :)
is it possible to print on demand to directly sell on Etsy, Shopify etc., using Launch Lab? I don't see that option.
At the moment Launxh Tabletop only delivers directly to you, the designer. But I know they are working on a much more ambitious service where they can fulfil and distribute orders. I don’t know the timescale for that though.
Hey Adam, if I may the background music was great but too loud compared to your voice ;)
That’s interesting - thank you, I’ll look at the levels next time.
Is there a way on canva to load a XLS and tag the text in order to populate the graphics? I found this function only on illustrator and the price for the license is too much for a prototype
I don’t know Federico! It may be possible - but it’s a bit too technical for me! :) I only know the basic functions.
I know Canva can do a lot more things that I’ve discovered yet, so it might be worth exploring!
Maybe try the affinity suite instead
You can do this in nandeck - a little bit of a learning curve, but there are several examples you can copy from. I just took an pre-existing example and played around with it until it made sense. And its a free tool.
You've provided an amazing resource, thank you so much!
But I just bought the affinity suite. Sigh
Affinity may have significantly more of a learning curve but I’m certain it is a more versatile product and can produce more professional results than Canva - so I don’t think it’s a bad decision! It all depends what you want to achieve. Quick and simple: Canva. Highly professional standard: Affinity :)
Thanks so much for this video! It's exactly what I needed as I've been trying to figure out how to take my home made prototype to the next level. I can’t wait for your box & rule sheet videos!
Thanks for this! Big dream to counterbalance my legal career with designing some card games and was just realizing I don’t know where to start with prototyping. Sounds like canva, the library printer, and card sleeves is a great start before I reach the pitching/launch tabletop phase. Appreciate all your extremely informative videos!
this video will one day save my life (or wallet) 😁 thank you!
Great walk-through video!
Hi Adam, thanks for the video. Totally agree about Canva. I've had a Pro account for a while now and appreciate the ease of use. I use it for marketing material, videos, and more. I'm working through my first game design and plan on trying Launch Lab. Any advice on the number of copies you typically order for playtesting? I'll be working with local gaming clubs/groups, taking copies to GenCon for their First Exposure room, etc. and want it to have a nicer look than hand drawn cards. Also, any other advice, tips & tricks, or thoughts on Launch Lab would be appreciated. Keep up the good work. Enjoy your day.
Hi - thanks for watching!
Personally I wouldn’t order printed copies while still playtesting. During this phase, I want to be able to throw away and destroy/replace components freely - so I’d tend to keep my prototypes cheap and disposable. I order printed copies when I get to the pitching stage - to show to publishers. At that stage I would usually make 5-7 copies depending on how many publishers I’m approaching.
During the playtesting phase, the number of copies needed depends entirely on your plans and process. I usually attend all my playtests (I don’t do them remotely) and I would rarely have more than one test running at a time. So one prototype is usually enough. Sometimes I make a second prototype for friends to take away and test with a wider group. This is especially useful if I’m working with a co-designer.
Very informative video. The crop tool in canva cuts some of the information (if the blue-green shape stands for information), I think you should try to resize the picture/text.
Yes, that’s true. It’s fine if you’re cutting off a pattern or block colour as a background, but wouldn’t work for an image where you wanted to retain all of it.
So after adding the box and instructions, what was the final cost?
After you're happy with the prototype, how many do you print? What's the final price? How much do you sell them for? And where do you sell them?
If you sell them online and ship them yourself, how do handle returns, damaged during delivery, missing cards, support, etc.?
Where and how do you market your games?
Final cost with a tuck box was $18.03 + shipping. This reduces significantly when you order multiple copies. And discount code ADAMINWALES will give you 20% off.
You can print as many as you like! I pitch my games to publishers so I tend to want a handful of copies (5-7?) to give as samples, but you could print hundreds if you were self publishing. These are all topics covered in a lot of detail in other videos on my channel :)
I don't sell my prototypes - I license them to publishers. But you could sell direct to customers, or self-publish through Kickstarter etc. There is loads of information about how to do this online.
Fantastic video!
I would like a tutorial for boxes!
It’s on its way! :) maybe in a week or two!
First
first what?