STAR WARS: Designing Trading Cards
Star Wars has a special place in everyone’s heart. Even if you have never seen the movies, or know any of the characters, you probably know a bit about Star Wars. Almost anyone can recognize Leia’s iconic cinnamon bun hairdo or the look of a Lightsaber. With such an iconic brand that resonates with millions of people, I knew these Star Wars trading cards had to be done right or not at all.
Within this article I will cover a brief visual history of trading cards and showcase how I created the Golden Gate Garrison Star Wars trading cards. While doing so, I hope I can bring you into my mind and teach you a bit about basic print file management.
The Clubs of Star Wars
I’m not going to go too deep into the 501st Legion, but it’s the first stop for anyone interested being part of Star Wars. From sporting events or appearing in commercials, members of the 501st Legion are usually hiding under those Star Wars costumes.
As a new member of the 501st Legion I was striving to make my mark in some way. Doing some research, I noticed the 501st Legion itself has member trading cards, but the Garrison I’m apart of did not.
Inspiration and excitement hit me like a train. I love Star Wars, I love dressing up as a character from Star Wars, and what if I could make official Star Wars merchandise!?
Research, Research, Research
Lets dive into the wonderful world of trading cards.
501st Legion
As I mentioned, the 501st Legion already had a trading card program. These Star Wars trading cards are used to promote the consuming clubs as well as have something cool to hand out to kids. These trading cards can not be sold, but they are official Star Wars merchandise.
Sports…?
A weird place to look while creating a SiFi space universe, but this is pretty much where trading card merchandise all begin. Even though I know little about sports, researching the history of their trading cards was fascinating and an important part of this exercise.
Here are a few trading card photos I gathered while doing my research:
The Old and the New
Star Wars trading cards have been around for a while, lets check out some:
Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and More!
Sports and Star Wars trading cards aren’t the only type of this merchandise. There are tons, just about every movie, super hero or sports team has a set of trading cards. There is no way for me to showcase all of them, but here are a few of the heavy hitters:
Trading Card Requirements
Start with research, then move into requirements.
From discussing with the Commanding Officer of the Golden Gate Garrison, these are the following requirements must be displayed on our trading cards:
- Legion ID Number
- Member Name
- Card Number
- Golden Gate Garrison Seal
- 501st Legion Seal
- Costume Photo
- Costume Name
- Portrait Photo
- Blurb about the Golden Gate Garrison
- LucasFilm LTD. Copyright / legal information
After discussing further, we decided to provide the member additional fields if they wanted:
- Call Sign
- Contact Email
- Costumes
- Golden Gate Garrison Web Address
Ready, Set, Go!
Now that I have a good grasp of what a general trading card should look like and know the requirements, I go full blown designer. If you would like to review my case study about these trading cards, please check out my Behance:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/32616055/STAR-WARS-Golden-Gate-Garrison-Trading-Cards
But, if you just want to see the final result, here it is:
Next Step, Talk to the Printer
When creating most of us are quite messy.
We designers need to step back and get our file print ready. Yes, that means you might need to remake a few things, but in the end it will be worth it.
Creating a Print Friendly File
After you have talked to your printer, you should have a general understanding of what they are looking for. Remember, the simpler you make it for your printer, the better results you will get… plus, its always smart not to have the printer hate you ;)
Pick Your Program
Adobe InDesign is one of the best page layout programs on the market. Yes, it has his quirks, but it is by far superior at creating print ready files.
Flattening and Converting to CMYK
You have to sit back and really digest what should be recreated in InDesign and what should be taken out. If you review the design, I’d say its quite grungy. This is not bad at all, but there would be no way (and no real point) to try and recreate most of this in InDesign.
In the end I was able to flatten my Photoshop file down to 9 layers. Starting from 40 or so layers to 9 layers, I think thats a good start.
Vector Graphics + Text
When creating a print ready file, try and keep the vector graphics and text separate. This will allow for a cleaner and crisper output from the printer.
Double Check Your Work
At this point you should feel confident that everything should print smoothly. But you want to do a quick check to make sure.
Always do a quick check in Adobe Acrobat. First a visual check, making sure all the content is correct and the requested printer marks a visible. Then dive a bit deeper into the Output Preview menu. Within this menu you can see if you accidentally kept an RGB file. Simply turn on and off a process color and you will instantly see if you left something in RGB.
If your file is completely white with all the process colors turned off, then you are good to go!
Done… But wait!
how do I create a system for members to order their trading cards?
The Complete Package
Working with the Golden Gate Garrison merchandise team we created an online order form. Within this order form a member can provide the required information and photos in an orderly and documented fashion.
Final Thoughts
The past 3 months I have made 23 Golden Gate Garrison trading cards. I’m ecstatic to have created so many in such a short amount of time. Only time will tell how many I create, I hope I get the chance to create hundreds!
I Hope you Enjoyed my Article
I’m a bit new at this, but I hope you got a glimpse of what is inside my head and a bit of the process you need to go through.
If you would like to know more about me or chat a bit about design, please feel free to add me on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joblesspunk
