I thought it might be helpful to post about what the process involved in making the new cards I posted about on Monday -particularly the experience I had using a professional printer. I really had no idea about what it would involve beforehand (or that it would be so time consuming!) - I didn't know where to start or what the Printer expected me to prepare for them. It's actually fairly straight forward once you know :) So for those interested - here it is! .....Warning! Long post ahead :)
Creating
The drawing and designing is the most time consuming and fun part of the process for me. This time I knew I wanted to make things a little more colourful and fun. This is my process in brief. For the cards and tags I first sketched some ideas and then went in search of reference photos. I usually do this on flickr where there is lots of great photos of animals etc. I find this especially helps with drawing the stance or pose of an animal. Then I sketch a lot more and then inked my final drawing. Then I redraw and ink the final drawing again. I've found this last step helps to improve the drawing a lot!
Then I scanned the drawings and, for these cards, used Illustrator to colour them (often I use Photoshop or a combination of both).
Working with a Professional Printer
In Turkey Printers are called Matbaa - which I love the sound of :) I don't know if this is how all printers work - it has been a total learning process for me - but this is how it all went down with the Matbaa here.
The printers I have worked with use a 50 x 70 cm sheet. So before I got in to any major drawing and designing I did a rough layout to work out how many cards, tags etc would fit on that sheet. This helps me to keep costs down while getting quite a few different designs done at the same time. This time I was also fitting packaging, business cards and bookmarks on the sheet.
When I prepared each design (as separate documents) I made sure that they were in CMYK mode. I also made sure that there was a 'bleed' area around each design. So, for example, I knew I wanted to make a card that was 115 mm. I put crop marks in to show where the card was to be cut, and then I put an extra area of 3mm around each edge. The colours and design continued out into this extra area. This is important because when your work is being cut, the cut may be slightly off - even it were only 1mm for example, if you had no bleed area then you would be left with an blank/white space - not pretty! I also used guide lines to show the Printer where to fold the cards.
Then we met with the Printer. I have used two different Printers and there was a difference with how they dealt with us and in the end result. I think its important to find one that you can work well with. The most recent Printer was fantastic and the quality of their work was excellent. They took the time to discuss the work and it I felt like they really just 'got it'. I could tell that they really took pride in their work -and it meant that in the end I loved the result - unlike last time where I had to get them to print quite a few items again because of faults in their work.
During the meeting we looked at the designs and discussed how I had indicated fold lines etc. We chose the paper - a really beautiful thick textured paper that was environmentally friendly - with high recycled and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) content - yay!
Then I emailed them my designs and the font files I used as they were not standard fonts. The Printer prepared all the designs and did test prints to give us an indication of the colours. We then went in again to check do a final check of the designs and that we were happy with the colours (although we knew they may vary a little once they are printed on the paper we chose). This is also when we were given a final price for the printing. Things that affect the price included the number of prints, whether die cut knives are required (I needed them for my tags) and the paper (mine was more expensive but I really wanted to have beautiful and more environmentally friendly paper).
We picked them up a few days later and they came up perfectly! Actually even better than I had imagined...I was so happy! And glad that we took all the time before hand to get them just right....now on to a lot more work putting the ribbons on, packing them up prettily etc etc!
Phew! A long post! Hope it's helpful :)
. It is such a fun tradition... This book is pretty classic 80s I think! So, with some scanning and emailing of all the jungle related cakes in the book, Yashar was also able to make his choice. He chose the lion! 
