A Kinko's Regular

So I've become quite the regular at Kinko's over the last few weeks. I've been printing things out in batches, making sure that I have the correct cover art and the game itself before going through with the printing and cutting process. The photo to right illustrates the cutting board I am using for trimming these covers. I learned the hard way early on that cutting out the covers with tool would be tiring (there's a lot of bending), time consuming (bring headphones), and you can't rely on the built in guides. Most of these cutters don't have square edges and are out of alignment, so you'll have to be diligent about getting perfect cuts.

My process looked something like this: get prints done on 11" x 17" 32lb laser paper at Kinkos, full size with no scaling, with crop marks printed around the artwork. After the printouts are done, take them to the cutter, slice off the excess white paper until you get a small border around the art with the crop marks intact, then use the crop marks to line up your cuts. Do the landscape (long) cuts first, then use the grid on the cutting surface to square up your cuts for the short ends. Lastly, you'll take 1-2mm off of the right edge of the print and gently slide the print into a UGC for test fitting. After you verify the cut is done and the cover art fits  you move onto the next one, and the next one, and the next one...