Well, shit. Tariffs are here, and they aren’t good. Plenty of game manufacturers are already talking about how negative they are for their businesses and, ultimately, how it will hurt the players. While I love to print my work professionally and prefer a nice booklet to use at the table as GM, digital files and print-and-play friendly products are one-way publishers like myself can help keep products approachable. So, I thought sharing tips from my roughly 20 years as a graphic designer might be worthwhile to help other small publishers do the same.
Print-Friendly Versioning
So, the most logical thing we can do as designers is offer versions of our products well-suited for printing at home. I have been exploring design choices to offer well-designed, print-friendly versions while retaining efficiency in my design process and producing the “normal” version.
Avoiding Backgrounds
The first significant tweak that I have made is moving all the background floods, textures, and patterns to a layer at the bottom of the stack labeled “Background.” I am only placing items on this layer that are not critical to the design yet would waste a ton of ink when printing at home. This way, when I go to generate the print-friendly version its’s as simple as deactivating the layer. It is also important that reversed type is not placed on top of these items, as they would disappear while removing the backgrounds. It’s a small concession but one that is easy enough to make to be more efficient in the long run.
No Bleeds
Since printing to the edge would require a larger sheet and cutting down every page, it’s often not feasible for home printing. I have been trying to move things that bleed off the page to the “Background” layer so they can easily be removed for the print-friendly version. I also make sure that no critical art elements are set to bleed, and I have been exploring stylistic treatments that allow full-page artwork to look normal when not bleeding. An example is a textured feathered edge resembling a brush stroke or illustrated borders to ground the artwork.
Usually, a .25" margin is a safe printable margin, but it can be as large as .5" along the bottom edge on some printer models.
Illustrated border example from Inside the Everflowing Curtain.
Sized for Binding
Two formats are particularly well suited to at-home printing. The first is the digest size (5.5" x 8.5"), which has become popular with TTRPG zines for its low cost and ease of printing in short runs. When you use some simple binding methods, a high-quality final product can be achieved as long as the page count remains low.
When the page count drifts past 36, I turn to the standard letter-sized page. However, I think it’s critical to leave a wide margin on the page to allow for binding methods like a comb or a 3-hole punch and binder. For example, The Gallery of Punks has a larger top margin built into the design, which would be a common way for a GM to use this type of content. This also avoids issues where artwork is cut off along the bottom edge, where the printable area is often reduced to make room for the printer’s gripper.
Three-hole punch or binding space on The Gallery of Punks.
High Contrast
Many people, myself included, prefer simple black-and-white laser printers for home printing due to their economical prints. So, it becomes critical that all of the key information has a high contrast ratio relative to its background to retain legibility when converting to black-and-white. I like to remove backgrounds from long passages of text and set body copy to 100% black for print-friendly versions to ensure the highest possible contrast and avoid any issues with faint, muddy type caused by lower-fidelity printing methods like inkjets on cheap paper where there is going to be a lot of dot gain.
Pages vs. Spreads
If your page size is US letter, it is also worth considering how your book’s usability changes when viewed in pages rather than spreads. Spine cross-overs are not possible and have a noticeable negative impact on things like maps, where key information can be lost.
Other Design Choices
These other design choices aren’t related to at-home printing, but they can help make your products cheaper to produce.
Embracing Black & White Artwork
While this approach may not be appropriate for every product, if your game’s art direction can support B&W lineart-based artwork, it does have a number of upsides. First, it tends to be less expensive to commission, and second, it tends to hold up well when using lower-cost printing methods, including one—or two-color printing like the old TSR modules.
Smaller Page Counts
Smaller page-count products can be printed in low runs on local machinery like digital presses. They also weigh less and can fit into smaller mailers, making them a large cost savings in other spaces. For example, it may make sense to produce a compendium of adventures as a series of digest-sized zines sold individually instead of a larger hardcover book containing them all. Mothership, as another example, has its rules spread across a series of zines and manages to actually increase the usability of the product by organizing information across the booklets.
Local Printing
There are many options for local printing that can make a lot of financial sense if your print run doesn’t need to be huge and you are flexible with your specs. Zines might be able to be produced in a copy shop on remnant paper if you are getting really scrappy. It also might be possible to save some money on a job by saving up a lot of projects that can be quoted together at a local printer to gain a quantity discount.
Riso prints at Wild Press in Glasgow
Depending on where you live and what the local art printing scene looks like, you might be able to find a Riso printer, which allows for some really unique, colorful print effects at more of a b&w copy level of pricing. The printing process and the output results are usually delightfully low-fi, which tends to suit the content of TTRPGs well.
POD options
For flagship products with higher page counts and heavier artwork counts, I will ensure that my approach works for print-on-demand fulfillment. I assume that these services, especially those with an international footprint, will adapt to the tariffs to optimize their pricing. For example, DriveThruRPG’s print vendor has slightly different pricing for the UK versus the US, and I imagine they will be incentivized to work around these tariffs as best they can.
So far, it seems like DriveThruRPG’s POD service, while more expensive than last year, hasn’t increased its price to an absurd level. So even if it’s no longer feasible to produce a small product run, hopefully, one-off pricing will remain somewhat feasible for people who have to have a book. Following the tips listed above, avoiding special print effects and using a standard format makes POD simple to offer.
