Producing Final Designs on Adobe

 The process of making my cards began with making a basic template on photoshop. This meant that images and text would all be in the same place on each card and it would look consistent, so whe it came to making each card I just had to edit the text and add my images. When I made a paper mock up, I liked the collage-y style because it had a infantile handmade feel which reminded me of my childhood as a creative kid. When I cut out my images on photoshop I left the a small white border to reference that scrapbook idea and give the images a bit of breathing space.

All my backgrounds and illustrations were scanned in high definition. I layered a translucent white box over the background which would act as a window for my objects to sit in, and it makes the background showing through a bit paler allowing the drawing to have dominance. I chose the backgrounds according to what colour scheme I thought complemented the object best.

I installed my chosen fonts, using one of them for the title and category, and the other for the headings and numbers, breaking the composition up into something visually managable and easy to interpret. I had to make sure the settings for the page set up were suitable for printing, so I made the files as large and high resolution as possible, and set the size to A7 which is how big the printed cards need to be.

The next step was importing the designs into Adobe inDesign to prepare them for printing. I added crop and bleed marks and I had to arrange it in a front, back, front, back order. Initially the printing company asked for all the cards to be on a single sheet. I did this and sent it to them, and they said it was actually supposed to be separate images in one file, so that was a big set back. Eventually I turned the finished file into a PDF and sent it to them through WeTransfer with all the details of how I wanted the cards to be made, including the size, finish and corners. The company I used is called Hayman Creative, who are based in Nottingham so fortunately I was able to collect the cards in person.

Here's an example of one of the finished cards, and the design on the back:

I chose the matt finish which feels super soft and smooth. I think this is suitable for trading cards because they are meant to be handled a lot and I think glossy paper would become very greasy, plus the reflection of light would detract from the image. I had the option to have round corners, however this would add further complications to the Adobe inDesign work and although a lot of trading cards have this type of corner, the cigarette cards don't and I think they still look effective that way. Plus, my cards function as art prints as well. I'm really happy with them overall. They feel good to hold and shuffle through, they have a visual playfulness that compliments the Top Trumps-style composition, and the print quality is great. It makes me happy to see them in physical form because they took so many hours to design and format on the computer. Doing this has allowed me to develop more comprehensive skills in photoshop and indesign which I will be able to use in the future.

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