Greetings!

[fantasticplastic]

Hello there peoples!

I'm a card game designer. I have two games under my belt (neither online at the moment) and am thinking of making a playing card deck with a solid, full-bleed background.

Question: how are guys getting these black decks printed without flaws? The design department at USPCC says they CANNOT print a solid-background deck without introducing artifacts.

Their manuals say that when using a solid background color, like black, I must expect chipping and fading.

Here is a direct quote from the USPCC design team: "all full bleed cards are subject to chipping when they are punched out".

So how, for example, is the Muertos Kickstarter project proceeding? Those are full-bleed decks.

Brian

[Rob Wright]

Welcome Brian. Glad you found the place. I know the discussion about full bleed has been brought up before. Try the search function. If you don't find what you are looking for, then pose the question in the Design/Dev board.

I'm also sure our good friend Don will be along shortly with a three paragraph explanation as well. 

[Don Boyer]

Hello there peoples!

I'm a card game designer. I have two games under my belt (neither online at the moment) and am thinking of making a playing card deck with a solid, full-bleed background.

Question: how are guys getting these black decks printed without flaws? The design department at USPCC says they CANNOT print a solid-background deck without introducing artifacts.

Their manuals say that when using a solid background color, like black, I must expect chipping and fading.

Here is a direct quote from the USPCC design team: "all full bleed cards are subject to chipping when they are punched out".

So how, for example, is the Muertos Kickstarter project proceeding? Those are full-bleed decks.

Brian

Hey, Brian,

Full-bleed is indeed very possible, and has been so for many years now.  Consider the warnings USPC's version of the ever-popular corporate game "Cover Your A$$".

Artifacting is indeed possible with any deck that's got large fields of solid color in the design - all-black decks being the likeliest victims.  But it doesn't seem to happen often enough to stop people from designing and ordering them, and it doesn't seem to stop buyers from buying them.  The problem's there, but I don't think it's as bad as they're claiming.

The biggest issue you'll run into is chipping AFTER manufacture.  All decks develop chips in the edges of the paper after being handled, especially at the short ends (top and bottom) because of riffle shuffling - it isn't the most pasteboard-friendly way to mix a pack of cards.  On a deck with white edges, the underlying paper is white and no one really cares much - you have to look really hard to even realize there's damage at all.  But for a black deck, the black chips reveal the white paper underneath and stand out like a sore thumb.  So black decks (or any other deck with a solid color other than white at the card's edge) which are actually put to use will get rather beaten in appearance a lot faster, meaning that they'll get replaced more quickly.

With black decks, some people have had success "Sharpie-ing" a deck - running a deep-black marker along the edges of the cards to disguise the chips.  But the ink absorbed into the edge of the card will have an impact on how the cards handle - it's OK for most purposes, but it's not as smooth-handling as when they were out-of-the-box new.

BTW, welcome!