Designing and Shipping Your Card Deck: A Kickstarter Roadmap

If you’re launching a Kickstarter for a card deck project, there are two key areas that will make or break your campaign: product design and logistics. Add-ons, marketing, and designing your campaign story page are also important, but they’re beyond the scope of this article. Here we’ll focus solely on how to physically design your product and ensure smooth fulfillment once your campaign wraps up.

Step 1: Nail Down the Content

Before diving into the creative aspects of your card design, you need to figure out what’s going on each card. When I designed The Deck of Many Quests, that meant fleshing out quest descriptions, what creatures I wanted in the deck, the types of items in there, and what “star rating” each card should have (this rating groups together similarly-leveled quests, creatures, and items).

The specifics of your project will be different, but the principle is the same: lock down the content early.

Once you’ve determined what’s going on your cards, create a prototype. You don’t need fancy materials at this point. When I first started, I printed The Deck of Many Quests in black and white on cardstock paper and cut the cards out by hand. It wasn’t pretty, but it was usable.

The goal here is to test your deck, get a feel for how it functions, and gather feedback. Try to get objective feedback from people you know but aren’t too close to. Close friends and family, for example, may be prone to giving you compliments when what you really need is constructive criticism.

This is an iterative phase. Playtest, refine, repeat. You’ll eventually hit a point where you feel either completely satisfied or you’ve had enough testing. Either endpoint is fine—don’t fear the phrase “It’s good enough.”

Step 2: Refine the Visuals

Once you’re confident in the mechanics and content of your deck, it’s time to focus on visuals. For most card-based products, good artwork is essential. Unless you’re going for a minimalistic design like Cards Against Humanity, eye-catching visuals can make or break the appeal of your deck.

How much art you need is up to you. At a minimum, you probably need a nice graphic for the backs of your cards and a logo for your product. If you’re trying to create a competitor to Magic: The Gathering, you may want a few more art pieces.

Unless you’re an artist and can do all the artwork yourself, I recommend that you start small if you’re on a budget. Secure enough artwork to create a few key cards for a solid Kickstarter mockup, and leave the rest as a problem for “future you.” If the cost of those few key pieces of artwork are a concern, you could negotiate with your artist and offer them a percentage of your campaign’s gross income as part of their payment. This might be difficult if this is your first Kickstarter and you have no proven track-record, but it might be worth a shot.

Now here’s big tip number one: use vector graphics, not raster graphics. Raster images lose quality when resized, while vectors scale without any loss of detail. This makes printing at high quality and creating marketing materials at different sizes much easier.

And for big tip number two: plan to convert your digital artwork to CMYK color profiles. All physical printing happens in the CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) color space, whereas work on a computer screen happens in RGB (red, green, blue). The bummer here is that CMYK doesn’t look right on a screen, and RGB doesn’t look right in real life. During printing (see our next step), you’ll likely need to go back and forth a couple of times with your chosen printer to make sure the final printed product looks like you expect it to.

How you put your card artwork together is up to you. I personally laid everything out in Adobe InDesign, but you may want to put it all together in Illustrator, Photoshop, or some other publishing software. If this isn’t your area of expertise, consider hiring a short-term contractor via Upwork or another hiring website.

Step 3: Purchase an Identifier

Before you’re ready to distribute your product, you’ll need to consider purchasing a GTIN (Global Trade Item Number), which is crucial for tracking and selling your product across multiple platforms. If you plan on selling your card deck through major online retailers like Amazon or in physical stores, a GTIN is required. GTINs are the barcodes you see on products, and they ensure that your items can be scanned, tracked, and sold within different supply chains. Your chosen printer (see the next section) will tell you where to put the GTIN on your packaging.

Purchasing your GTIN from a legitimate source such as GS1 (the global standards organization that issues GTINs) is important. Don’t be tempted to go for third-party barcode sellers, as these might not be accepted by all retailers. A GS1-registered barcode ensures your product is recognized globally and won’t face issues with listing on large retail platforms. Remember: if it ain’t GS1, you better run.

Even if you plan to handle direct sales yourself, having a GTIN opens doors to future expansion, whether through large retailers or partnerships with distributors. It’s a small but crucial investment that legitimizes your product in the eyes of retail systems and ensures smoother transactions down the line.

Step 4: Preparing for Printing

Once the design phase is solid, it’s time to get quotes from printers. I recommend AdMagic for printing cards, but other options include PrintNinja and Regent Publishing. Reach out to multiple companies and compare quotes, being sure to factor in not just the cost of printing but also shipping and any extra fees. When comparing quotes, keep everything apples-to-apples: the same order quantity, paper finishes, and so on.

Another cost to bear in mind is product testing. Depending on the minimum age your product will target, and where you plan to sell it, you will need to pay to have a sample of your product tested and certified. For example, if you want to sell on Amazon or if your product is intended for children under 13 in the United States, it will need to undergo CPSIA testing. Talk to each printer about what services they offer in this regard, as it’s likely that they have a lab they can ship the final product to in order to get the necessary testing certifications.

Printers have a minimum order quantity (MOQ), often between 500-1000 units. As your print run increases, the per-unit cost goes down. You won’t have to decide on exact quantities until your Kickstarter campaign finishes, but be aware that higher quantities are more economical.

Once you’ve settled on a printer, they will want the artwork that goes into your cards. For me, that ended up being all of my cards laid out side by side in a PDF, as well as the artwork for the nice box that my cards come in (seriously, it’s a really nice box). The printer then used these files to print the final product over in China, which was then shipped to our fulfillment center here in the United States.

And speaking of fulfillment centers…

Step 5: Fulfillment Logistics

Once your Kickstarter campaign has ended and your product is printed, the next hurdle is getting your cards to your backers. You could certainly have your printed product delivered to your doorstep and then mail each copy out yourself, but I find that it’s much easier to use a third-party logistics (3PL) provider. I recommend the likes of Fulfillrite or ShipBob, who will handle receiving of your finished product, warehousing, and shipping to customers. Fulfillrite is excellent in their service, but their order minimums can get pricey; ShipBob’s support leaves a lot to be desired, but they cater to smaller-volume shippers like myself.

If your campaign nets a lot of international backers, you might want to look into sending portions of your inventory to 3PLs in different regions, such as the European Union. Shipping from the US to Europe is expensive, and customs fees add up. By distributing your product through regional 3PLs, you can save your backers money on shipping costs and avoid some of the headaches that come with international logistics.

Step 6: Post-Campaign Support

Even after your cards are shipped, your job isn’t done. Expect a handful of issues, like missing or damaged shipments. I’ve found that it’s better to err on the side of generosity when it comes to customer service. Replacing a few products, even at a small cost to you, can go a long way in fostering goodwill.

Running a successful Kickstarter is a multi-faceted endeavor, but the key to your project’s success lies in solid product design and seamless logistics. By following these steps, you’ll set yourself up for success long before your campaign goes live. Focus on nailing the content, creating appealing visuals, preparing for print, and handling fulfillment smoothly, and you’ll be well on your way to delivering a great product to your backers.