When I Was a Custom Card Designer – The Birth of “GameDay Graphers”

I may not have been completely satisfied with my effort on my very first custom card, but that may have only served as motivation to improve. My thinking was that, not only did the design and execution of the “Memorabilia” card hold some glimmer of promise, it also lent itself to other avenues of card creation. This thought process came amid debates from other card collectors about the pros and cons of on-card autographs. Being a proponent of on-card autos myself, and being a newborn IP auto junkie, it felt a natural step in my custom card making to turn to a design created specifically to be autographed.

Of course, before I realized that autograph cards were the way for me to go, I had to give the first design one more shot. The purpose of this design was to offer a much larger window for memorabilia specific to a certain event. For instance, if I had been at the game in which Francisco Liriano tossed his no-hitter, I would create a card that would hold the ticket stub to that event. As another example, if I was not at another game of importance, I could create a card that would hold a newspaper or magazine clipping depicting said event. The problem with my particular design is that it was not conducive to the low resolution photographs available online.

click to view larger versions

Another problem with the design was that it seemed too boxy and did not carry enough of a “custom” feel. So, in an effort to finally improve the overall design of the product, I started over from scratch. I still kept the Memorabilia idea incorporated, but moved away from the plain and boxed feel of the original.

Pat Neshek – GameDay Memorabilia Re-Try
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Doing away with the rectangular space held for the Memorabilia portion of the card, I opted for a more curved approach. In order to add a little more punch and depth, I separated some of the elements and incorporated team colors. I also added jersey number and position. While the design itself was much sharper and more interesting than the first go, the curvature of the window portion of the card turned out to be too difficult to remove. It was then that I decided to move away from Memorabilia and design specifically for on-card autographs. Fortunately, this particular design was very useful to that end. And so, GameDay Graphers was born.

As you can see, in order to differentiate from the Memorabilia version, some design elements were changed and/or removed. The “window” would instead be left on the card in order to give the player a nice, large area with which to mark up with his signature.

2009 GameDay Graphers – Pat Neshek – Back
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Of course, with the front of the card figured out, it was time to come up with an appropriate back. If I had learned one thing from the original design, it was that the front design should be carried over to the back. Design consistency is something that I tend to harp on with other designs, my own designs should be no different.

As you may notice, I did keep the background element from the original back design, but this time around I carried over elements from the front of this particular version. The fonts used and the write-up were changed to reflect the specific event of the card and the career stats were aligned with the write-up so as not to interfere with the player image to the left of the text. Since I felt that I would be creating more of these in the upcoming baseball season, I branded the cards with a “2009” just beneath the GameDay logo. The card identifier would not be simple numbering but would instead use a GDG for “GameDay Graphers” or GDM for “GameDay Memorabila” followed by the initials of the player (PN for Pat Neshek). For this particular card, an IE was added for “Inaugural Edition” since it was the first GameDay card that I would attempt to have autographed.

It’s fairly apparent that I had already decided well into the design process who my first autograph target would be. I chose Pat because I was already well aware of what a fan-friendly player he was. Not only that, he, at the time, played for my favorite baseball team, the Minnesota Twins. He seemed like a fairly easy target, so I wasn’t too concerned that I wouldn’t get my card back with his autograph on it.

After going through the design process, I then had to figure out how in the world to print and assemble the thing. A few weeks worth of troubleshooting went by using different types of paper and printing processes as well as different types of glues. Sometimes the printed ink would bleed or smudge, sometimes the glue would eat through the paper or just not adhere at all. I had difficulty attaining any sort of sturdiness with the paper stock I had been using. I also had no real good way of cutting the card down to its proper size. My solution to these dilemmas was to glue a junk card to the card front, then trim the excess of the card front off with an Xacto knife. Afterwards, I would affix the the card back to the amalgamation of my card front and junk card and trim the excess off of that. The resulting physical card was nice and firm but looked obviously layered.

Another problem that I encountered was how to keep the cards from bleeding and smudging while at the same time give them a glossy coat and make sure they could still accept an ink autograph. I ended up choosing an acid-free UV resistant gloss spray. My poor wife can attest to all of the hours that I spent in the garage trying to develop and perfect an application method. Let me tell you, the place stunk of formaldehyde and moth balls for about a week after each test spraying. Not pleasant. What resulted was a slick looking, foul smelling custom designed baseball card that was not flimsy and was smudge resistant. At that point, I felt that, shy of spending thousands of dollars that I don’t have on equipment I don’t have a place for, that was the best I was going to be able to do.

Feeling that my design was ready to dip its toes out in the open, I printed and assembled two Inaugural Edition versions of the Pat Neshek card shown above–one for me and one for Pat to keep. It didn’t take him very long to sign and return it. Just like that, not only did I have my first ever custom card signed, I also had my first ever TTM autograph. I was elated! However, as I was taking the card out of its return envelope, it fell apart. I was crushed! I thought the card had somehow been separated during delivery. I sent a personal message to Pat on his message board asking him if the cards came to him the way it was returned to me. This is what he had to say…

Nope the cards arrived perfect, I was curious to see how you made them on such heavy cardboard and moved the card a little and noticed you put them on the back of a topps card, pretty sweet cards, probably the top homemade cards I’ve seen.

Pat disassembled my card! I was relieved by this news and, quite frankly, had a pretty good chuckle out of it. I’m glad he was able to take it apart with ease. It forced me to improve my card assembly method. Cards thereafter contained nothing but my own purchased card stock.

After the great success of having my first custom autograph card signed, I was encouraged to continue my new-found hobby of custom card design. My new goal was to acquire as many Twins signatures as I could. The best way for me to do that? Hitting up TwinsFest and the Twins Autograph Party of 2009… but that’s for another blog post.