Getting the Makers Tiles card set produced is a much longer process than our usual book projects. Usually, I finish the illustrations at the 11th hour, print all the subscriber books out, Matthew trims, staples, binds and covers them, and we assemble the mailing the next day. It’s a whirlwind of high-octane activity and we are both miserable and clawing each others’ eyes out by the time it’s over. But, like I said, it’s usually over in two days. And then we can get back to being friends again.
The Makers Tiles card set is different. Mostly because it had to be sent to China in order to be produced. Turns out, those Chinese do remarkably good work. I was convinced that they could handle the precision of this job after watching the opening ceremonies at the 2008 Olympics. So, the proof sheets have come back in the mail already, and I had to hold the card sheet up to the light in order to make sure the fronts and the backs of the cards lined up. The sheet was too big for my measly 11×17 light table, so I had to get creative (and wait for daylight).
The cards will all be printed on this one sheet and then precisely trimmed into 3×3 cards afterwards. And, actually, they’ll be printed on a much heavier stock – this was just a proof to show how it would line up.
The backs of the cards will have a simple design on them (each card divided (from corner to corner) into two color field triangles) that, when the cards are face down, can be rearranged, rotated and organized to make different patterns. Kind of like tangrams, except if you only had two pieces. For example – 8 tiles:
can be recombined into a variety of different patterns, for example this:
or this:
Which is, admittedly, not as great as having lots of different pieces, but frankly it got too frickin’ complicated to design a bunch of different card backs and I was going crazy until Matthew came up with this solution. Ultimately, we’d rather have people playing with the fronts of the cards rather than the backs. But, I suppose if they finally exhaust themselves with the fronts, we’ve given them another something to do.
Because we like to keep our subscribers busy, and out of trouble.
The backs of the cards could be used by quilt designers. They remind me of trying to piece together the first quilt I made.
Brava, Robbi.
I have a friend who have a plastic toy pieces just like this. I think it enhances the functions of the brain.