As a professional custom playing card printing manufacturer, I often need to print prototypes and samples of playing cards. However, printing individual cards can waste a lot of paper and ink. So I set out to find an efficient way to print multiple cards per page.
After plenty of trial and error, I’ve dialed in a streamlined process for printing up to 16 playing cards on a single sheet of paper. Whether you’re prototyping a new game or printing samples for playtesting, this guide will show you how it’s done.
Why Print Multiple Cards per Page
When printing playing cards, most people just throw a single card design into their printer. This works OK if you only need a few copies.
But if you’re creating multiple cards for a new game, things get inefficient fast. Even a simple deck with just 52 cards would take 52 sheets of paper!
By arranging multiple card designs on each sheet, you can save a tremendous amount of paper, ink, and time.
Benefits include:
- Use up to 90% less paper and ink
- Print a 52-card deck on as few as 4 sheets
- Create card batches faster for playtesting
- Free up space for storing printed cards
So if you’re going to print more than just a handful of cards, learning this multiple card printing process is a must!
How to Print Multiple Playing Cards on One Page
Step 1: Design Your Cards
First, you need to create the actual card designs that will go onto each sheet. The process of designing cards varies greatly depending on your specific needs.
Here are a few options for mocking up card designs on your computer:
- Microsoft Word: Easy to use, just add shapes and text boxes
- PowerPoint: Lots of templates and design options
- Photoshop/Gimp: Best for polished designs with images
I prefer to use Photoshop for my card projects. The robust design tools make fine-tuning layouts and graphics a breeze.
Card Dimensions
When sizing your cards in your chosen app, make sure to use proper playing card dimensions:
- Poker Size: 2.5 x 3.5 inches
- Bridge Size: 2.25 x 3.5 inches
- Tarot Size: 2.75 x 4.75 inches
Poker and bridge sizes work great for most games. Larger tarot sizes allow more detailed artwork.
Step 2: Set Up Printer and Page Layout
Once your cards look sharp on screen, it’s time to prep them for printing. This involves setting up your printer settings and creating a grid layout for positioning cards.
Printer Prep
Start by opening your printer preferences and making sure the following settings are adjusted:
- Paper size: Letter (8.5 x 11 inches)
- Orientation: Landscape
- Print quality: Draft or Normal
Draft quality prints faster and uses less ink. But it can look more pixelated, especially for cards with photos or gradients.
Create Grid Template
Now you need to map out exactly where your card designs will go on the sheet. I like to use an invisible grid for easy positioning.
To make the grid template:
- Open a blank document at 8.5 x 11 inches
- Use guides or shapes to divide it into an even grid
- Size the rows/columns to match your card dimensions
- Print out the template to use as a positioning guide
With the template printed, you have an easy way to map out the card placement on your sheet.
Step 3. Arrange Multiple Cards on Sheet
Here comes the fun part – filling the sheet by arranging actual card designs!
Start by placing your first card in the top-left corner of the grid, lining it up with the edges.
Then duplicate that layer in your editing app and drag the copy to the next cell over in the grid. Repeat until the top row is filled.
Next, make a duplicate of the entire top row. Drag that grouped layer down to the second row on your grid. Keep duplicating rows until you’ve filled the whole page.
Make sure to leave a small margin between card edges and trim lines. Otherwise your designs might get cutoff!
With that, your printable digital collage packed with cards is ready to go.
Step 4. Print, Cut and Sleeve!
You did it – a whole gang of playing cards on one page!
Feed your packed page through the printer, using high quality settings for best results.
Once printed, carefully trim out the cards along the margins with an X-Acto knife or paper cutter.
Finally, slide each printed card into a protective sleeve to finish it off. Standard sports card sleeves work perfectly.
Optionally, you can glue the prints onto actual playing card cardstock for extra durability.
And that’s it! With this efficient process, you can crank out great looking playing card prototypes affordably.
No more wasting massive stacks of paper and ink every time you need to print cards. Just fill each sheet and conserve resources like a pro!
Print Multiple Cards FAQs
Before you fire up your imaging software and printer, here are answers to a few frequent questions about squeezing multiple playing cards onto single sheets.
How Many Cards Can Fit Per Page?
It depends on the size of your cards and printer paper. For example, you can easily fit 16 standard poker-sized cards on a letter size sheet. Or up to 20 if you border less and don’t mind trimming.
Some people modify printers and use larger paper to cram even more. But 16 per page is a nice square grid that’s easy to work with.
Can You Print Borders and Backs?
Yes! With most editing programs you can define borders and color blocks or imagery for card backs. Just leave a margin for cutting accuracy.
The only caveat is that lined up backs and fronts might not align perfectly when cutting after printing. Using card sleeves solves any small alignment issues.
What About Double Sided Printing?
Most home printers can’t print both sides automatically. But you can feed the paper through twice manually to print fronts on one pass, then backs on the second pass.
Just be extra careful during cutting to ensure fronts and backs line up properly! Using adhesive sleeves helps secure front/back alignment.
Is This Technique Good for Prototypes?
Absolutely! In my experience, quickly printing a dozen or so card options multiplies the effectiveness of real-world playtesting.
Being able to efficiently print card batches allows you to fine tune designs based on feedback. Much better than playtesting a single handmade deck over and over!
Go Forth and Print Multiple!
Whew, that covers everything you need to know about efficiently printing a high volume of cards on far fewer sheets.
With these tips, you can stop wasting paper and start accelerating your playing card projects, whether you’re prototyping new games or printing samples and demos.
To recap, the key steps are:
- Design properly sized card graphics
- Prep printer settings and make grid template
- Arrange multiple card layers on sheet
- Print, trim and sleeve!
If you have any other questions about efficiently printing playing cards, hit me up!
And if you come up with any clever tricks for cramming even more cards onto each page, I’d love to hear about that too!
Now get out there, be resourceful, and let the world play your amazing new card-based games!