Lessons learned about printing

There are many interesting ways to realize a trivia game once all the questions have been collected and verified. A lot of people we talk to have creative suggestions, and there is no doubt in my mind that we will have to explore several of these more thoroughly in due time. However, we have since the beginning had our minds set on making a good old-fashioned board game, and it is towards this goal we are putting our efforts now.

So, how does one go about making a trivia board game? Well, first of all, and most important of all, you need the questions. Luckily, we have gotten a lot of help from our friends and from fans of the game through our web site. Then you need to design a game board, design the graphics for the question cards, and design the graphics for the game box. We've had a lot of help here from our highly skilled and very awesome friend Ida, who designs and sells t-shirts through gløshaugen.no. The next thing on the agenda is printing the game board, the question cards and the game box. That part's easy, right? Just send off all the design files and questions to a printer, and get it back in a week, right?

It turns out there's more to it than that, to put it in terms of Gross Understatement. Over the past weeks, I've learned more about paper weight, surface treatments, offset prints, silk prints, file formats, cutting, folding and the overall process of putting everything together than I thought there was to know. Apparently, and this is news to me, there are thousands of different types of paper! And, to make the game box the exact size we wanted, they have to make a new tool! I have a newfound respect for the professionals in the printing industry. Every job is a custom job, with specific parameters and requirements. There's no magic printing machine that spits out everything I want to exact specifications.

Another thing I've learned about printing, is that it is expensive. Much more expensive than I thought it would be. Now, we are obviously learning the lesson that every entrepreneur in Norway learns at some point: production in Norway is pricey, so don't do it. However, given our tight schedule and small volume, as well as our need to be able reach our suppliers on short notice, going abroad isn't really an option at this point.

The third and most important thing I've learned about the printing business, is that everyone in the business seems to be very friendly and helpful, as well as enthusiastic about our game. Which is fantastic - I cannot imagine having enthusiastic suppliers is a bad thing for our game! :)