Design

November 12, 2024 In Design

Inlay: how to choose the right one

Choosing the Right Inlay for Your Board Game: Plastic, Paper, and Pulp Trays

While the box of a game can be considered the first impression, the inlay is one of the first things you notice after you open the box. A well-designed inlay enhances the user experience by organizing components, protecting game pieces, and creating a memorable unboxing experience. And who doesn’t love to organize things?A good inlay has many different functions at the same time. It protects the game components while the game is being transported. It creates an appealing look when the box is opened. It makes it easy to start a game and clean it up afterwards. Here’s a look at the pros and cons of three popular types of inlays: plastic, paper and paper pulp formed trays.

Plastic Inlays

Plastic inlays are molded to securely hold each piece in a dedicated slot, preventing shifting during transport. They’re a favorite in games with a lot of components due to their durability and precise customization options. The precision with which you can make different slots to specifically hold a certain component makes them very convenient for complex games to help speed up setting the game up. With plastic inlays you can opt for 1 large tray, or separate it into different separate trays that can be taken out of the box and placed on the table to play with. Miniatures and components with unique shapes can be placed in their dedicated slots for optimal protection, with the option to add a lid on top to prevent things from moving around all together.

Pros:

Long-lasting Durability: Plastic inlays resist wear and tear, keeping pieces in place over time.
Custom Fit: Allows for detailed molding to fit specific components, enhancing presentation and protection.

Cons:

Environmental Impact: Plastic has a high environmental footprint and may not appeal to eco-conscious gamers.
Space Requirements: Plastic trays can be bulkier, adding to box dimensions.

Paper Inlays

Paper inlays are an environmentally friendly, cost-effective choice. These can range from simple cardboard dividers to more complex constructions with multiple wells to place different components in. Depending on the size of the game box and the weight of the components it can be made from heavy card stock or e-flute backed cardstock. It can be a paper in a specific color or it can be printed in 4C, giving extra room to show off beautiful artwork and increase the game experience!

Pros:

Cost-Effective: Compared to plastic, paper inlays are economical and effective.
Sustainable: Recyclable and made from renewable materials, making it the greener choice.

Cons:

Limited Customization: Can’t achieve the same intricate compartmentalisation as plastic.

Paper Pulp Formed Tray Inlays

Paper pulp trays are created from molded recycled paper, offering a balance between customization and detailed structure a plastic tray gives, but retaining sustainability of a paper based product. These inlays are growing in popularity as an eco-friendly alternative to plastic. Similar to plastic trays they require a mold, but at the same time that allows for precise details and highly specific compartments. As the industry becomes more aware of its ecological footprint, expect to see more and more of these in your favorite games.

Pros:

Eco-friendly: Made from recycled materials, paper pulp is biodegradable and reduces plastic usage.
Good structure: More structured than flat paper, it offers a stable base for components.
Customizable designs: Allows for tailored slots and shapes without the environmental cost of plastic.

Cons:

Less precision: Paper pulp trays lack the exacting fit of plastic, which can mean less secure component storage.
Higher costs than standard paper inlays: Pulp inlays are generally more expensive than basic cardboard inserts.

September 22, 2023 In Boda Games, Design

Printing on wooden components

Wooden components are a staple of board games for as long as they have been around. They fit together perfectly with paper cards and punchboard game boards to create the classic board game experience. Everyone knows the piles of wooden cubes, discs and rectangles that are so common euro style games. However, you can do a lot of things with wooden components, both in terms of size and shape as well as printing. The three most commonly used methods for printing artwork, numbers and symbols on wooden components are silk screen printing, heat transfer printing and UV printing. Even though they overlap in certain areas, each of these printing methods has their own advantages. Picking the right one for the components in your board game will elevate the experience. We will explain the process, the advantages and the limitations for each of them. Silk Screen Printing Silk screen printing is done by pushing the ink through a stencil or screen. The screen is made of a fine mesh material that is stretched across a frame. In the screen, the areas where the ink should flow through are left open, and the other areas are blocked. Then, ink will be applied to the...

September 13, 2023 In Boda Games, Design

Adding a Finish part 1: Spot UV & Hot Foil Stamping

In this series we will take a closer look at the types of finish you can add to board game components. They are commonly used on the game boxes in order to help the artwork stand out. But can also be applied to other paper components such as punchboards, game boards, cards and more. The first two that we will discuss are the ones most commonly found when you look around at a board game store. These are spot UV and hot foil stamping. What do these terms mean exactly? And what kind of effect do they add to your components. And more importantly: how does the manufacturing process work? One of the nice things about being a board game manufacturer is that we apply a lot of different techniques that are normally only used in specific parts of the printing industry. As board game publishers and designers continue to seek out new ways to make their game. We keep on expanding our portfolio of technologies. As a result, our board game manufacturing capabilities include a lot of specialized printing techniques. The two that we will discuss today are printing techniques that aim to enhance the visual appeal of printed materials....

May 27, 2022 In Boda Games, Design

Inside of the game box

What's in the box?! While this reference to a movie from the '90s might not ring a bell with everyone. The inside of a board game box should be very familiar for all of us! In this article, we want to take a closer look at an aspect of board games. That can sometimes be overlooked in the grand scheme of things. Until the very end when everything needs to be finalised and submitted. We are talking about the inside of the game box. First, let's start at the beginning. It is safe to say that the vast majority of game boxes for board game are made from grey board carton. This sturdy material, as you may expect from the name, has a grey color / look to it. That's no problem, because we will wrap the outside of the box with printed paper. That has beautiful and colourful illustrations on it. However, the wrapping around the game box only extends several centimeters over the edge and into the inside of the box. Thus, this means that the inside of the box will still show the bare grey board material. After this, it becomes a matter of personal preference. Some people don't...

May 30, 2021 In Boda Games, Design, Tutorial

How to curve text – Boda Games Tutorials

Curve text: what does it mean and why is it important? One of the great things about a board game, is that it is literally a blank slate. Game designers and artists take this blank slate and fill it with artwork, bringing the paper components to life. When you have a great theme and beautiful artwork, the next step is to use a font for all the text that matches with it perfectly. A lot of game designers and artists look beyond the standard font types available in programs like Adobe Illustrator to find the perfect fit for their game. Custom fonts Custom fonts can be found and purchased online, or even created by the artist himself. Using custom fonts can, however, lead to complications when preparing the files for printing. Boda Games has prepared a video tutorial showing the problem that can occur when using custom fonts. After that, we show you the solution to this problem. By curving the text before exporting the file as a .PDF file, you can avoid this problem. And ensure that your files appear the same way at our graphics department as you originally made them. Problem: font not available A common problem with preparing artwork files....

November 30, 2020 In Boda Games, Design

Color mode: CMYK or Pantone?

If you’re a board game designer or publisher, you will definitely have heard one or more of these terms thrown around as you prepare all your artwork files for printing. You might even have a vague idea of what the terms stand for. But what is a color mode exactly? What is the difference between CMYK and Pantone? And when should you use which one. These are all questions we commonly get from customers. In this article, we will explain what the differences are between these color modes. When you should use which one. And what to watch out for when working with a specific color. Different board game components have different requirements for the color mode, so make sure you always check before you get started. We specify the color mode for each component in our Artwork Guidelines. So we always recommend starting from there when you start working on your files. CMYK (4C): The term CMYK is an abbreviation of the words Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key. In case these colors don’t ring a bell, you can think of them as blue, red, yellow and black respectively. CMYK is also referred to as four color printing (4C) sometimes. With CMYK...

July 28, 2020 In Boda Games, Design

Boda Games Temple – how to design a punchboard building

..When we started work on our previous sample box, we set a goal that the components would not only be indicative of the Boda Games quality, but also had to be great to look at and fun to put together. Thus when we were brainstorming what to do with the punchboard, we decided on a punchboard building. Our punchboard building is made to look like a traditional Chinese temple, including details such as circular windows, slanted roofs and paintings of Chinese door guards. Prototyping When you are creating a complex punchboard such as our temple, the first thing is to sketch the overall structure. From there on, you can start thinking how the different pieces can fit together to eventually form the shape you have in mind. If you are unsure how to start, have a look at some board games (or one of our sample boxes) that you have on hand and carefully study each individual piece and how it comes together to create an overall structure. We also highly recommend first working on the shape before you get started on the artwork. That way, you can print blank versions and check whether all the pieces fit together and adjust sizing...

July 23, 2020 In Boda Games, Design

History of 3 Boda Games Meeples – Part III

The final member to be introduced in our history of the 3 Boda Games meeples is Shenlong the dragon meeple. Unlike the other 2 meeples we’ve discussed, Shenlong is not in our newest version of the sample box. But he was in the previous one, so a lot of you have already seen him! Shenlong was a favorite around the office when we first made him, and has some really cool details. The inspiration came from traditional Chinese paintings, where dragons are often depicted. Then we started brainstorming, how can we do something cool and different with the design of this meeple? In the first part of the history of the 3 Boda Games meeples, we introduced you to our artist meeple. There, we also explained the wood cutting process of meeples. A long piece of wood is cut into a shape, and then the meeples are “sliced” off from the wooden stick. This is a common method for manufacturing wooden meeples and it gives great results, particularly for smaller and more traditional shaped meeples. But, actually there is another way to make wooden meeples. This time, each individual piece of wood is cut out from a flat plank of wood, one at...

July 16, 2020 In Boda Games, Design

History of 3 Boda Games Meeples – Part II

We started our ancient China illustration themes with the large walled city illustration that you have seen at a convention, on our website on the home page or on Instagram. One of the many things that made it so much fun to work on was that we did our very best to hide small details and easter eggs in there wherever possible. We particularly liked the small yet cute meeple dog we hid in there, that we have since named Xiaogou. After getting great feedback from our own staff as well as our customers, we decided to turn Xiaogou into one of the meeples for our latest sample box. A silk screen meeple to be precise. For this meeple, we decided to make it using a silk-screening process. With silk-screening, you can print multiple colors and shapes on top of the meeple, allowing for a very detailed design. In the case of Xiaogou, we wanted to capture the playful nature of the dog with the tongue hanging out and the happy eyes as well as show off the different colors of fur he has. The first thing you need to do is create the overall shape of the wooden piece that will...