What print and play actually is

When I first saw the term, I assumed it meant somebody had saved their cards as a PDF and put it up for download.

Then I opened one: nine cards laid out on an A4 sheet, thin lines marking where to cut, and a second page with the backs arranged to match the fronts when printed double-sided. That preparation made it much easier to turn the file into a usable deck.

Print and play, often shortened to PnP, is common in board gaming. You download a game, print and cut out the components, then play. Among facilitators and coaches you'll also see print-to-play, print-at-home, or simply "printable" on a product page.

The first post in this series is about when this format makes sense to use. This one's about what you're actually looking at when you open one of these files.

Nine cards to a page

A print-and-play file puts several cards on each page to save paper. Nine poker-sized cards fit on an A4 sheet in a three-by-three grid, before allowing for any extra gaps or bleed. A 54-card deck in that layout takes six sheets printed on both sides, or twelve if you print fronts and backs separately.

Front-to-back alignment needs checking. On a home printer, the second side can land a millimetre or two away from where you wanted it. You might never notice on a letter. On a card, it leaves the back off-centre once you've cut along the front's lines.

A more expensive printer doesn't guarantee perfect alignment, so print a test sheet before committing to the whole deck. There are two useful layouts to consider.

The straightforward one is a standard grid, with fronts on one side of the sheet and backs on the other, printed double-sided. It uses the least paper and it works fine if your printer registers well. Mine does, most of the time.

The other is gutterfold. Each card's front and back sit on the same side of the sheet, arranged so that folding brings them together. You only print one side, then fold and cut. That avoids the printer's front-to-back alignment problem, although you still need to fold accurately. It uses more paper, and the finished cards are two layers thick.

I don't use it myself. My printer aligns well enough, and I don't have the patience for folding every sheet. But it's available alongside the standard grid in I Love Cards. For double-sided printing, there's also a setting to shift the back layout by a measured amount if your printer consistently drifts in the same direction.

The gap between cards

Leaving a gap between cards means making two cuts at each internal boundary. With the background extended into that gap as bleed, small cutting errors are less likely to leave an unwanted edge on the card.

You can also place the cards directly against each other, so one cut separates two cards. That saves cutting time. It works best when neighbouring cards share the same background colour: a slightly misplaced cut is less noticeable. Keep text away from the edges either way.

For cards with different background colours or a frame near the edge, I'd leave a gap and check the result on a test sheet.

Card size

Poker size, 63.5 by 88.9 millimetres, is a common starting point.

For workshop decks I usually want something bigger. My cards get spread across a table while people stand around reading them, sometimes from a metre away, and a poker card doesn't hold enough text to survive that. The size I keep coming back to is jumbo, 89 by 140 millimetres. There's room for a prompt and a line explaining it, and nobody has to lean in.

Larger cards use more paper. Four cards of that size fit on an A4 sheet before adding gaps or bleed, compared with nine at poker size. For a 54-card deck, that's fourteen pages of fronts instead of six. I'd accept the extra paper if it makes the cards easier to read around a table.

I Love Cards has size presets and accepts custom dimensions, so you can choose a size that suits the activity.

If you may send the deck to a print shop later, compare its standard sizes before choosing your dimensions. A custom size can cost more.

Things that print badly at home

Thin borders have caught me out. A small shift makes one side of the frame look wider than the other. A background that extends beyond the cut line is more forgiving. Keep text well back from that line too, so a cutting error doesn't trim a word.

Large dark backgrounds are heavy on toner and often come out patchy on a home printer. Some publishers ship a low-ink version of their deck alongside the full-colour one, which is a decent thing to do. It's less work than it sounds, because a deck is usually built on a handful of templates rather than fifty-four individual designs. In I Love Cards you make a pale version of each template and the whole deck follows.

And whatever size you land on, check it in the room rather than on screen. Print one card, put it on a table, and stand up. That's the view your participants get.

The file you send to a print shop

A print shop usually needs a different export from the one you'd use at home. Check its requirements before preparing the file. These are common differences:

Don't assume the shop wants your home-printing cut lines. It may add its own marks when arranging cards for the press.

Ask for the shop's file specifications. Bleed might be 3mm or 2mm, colour handling varies, and some shops want files named in a particular way. Their requirements take priority over this table.

I used to rebuild both files whenever I changed a card. The print center in I Love Cards saves me that work. I choose home printing or a print-shop export, then set the layout and print options for the job. After an edit, I can export again without rearranging every card.

Check the PDF before printing, particularly when using a new size or sending it to a different shop.

Next: choosing a printer, paper, and cutter for print and play.