Motion Sickness, one of New Zealand's most awarded independent creative companies and the current AXIS Agency of the Year, came to us with a brief that was equal parts exciting and demanding. Their client, the Karangahape Road Business Association, needed a custom playing card deck to mark the return of K' Road's cultural calendar: 54 fully branded cards and a matching tuck-in carton. The pressure point? A prototype deck was needed within days for a product shoot, with the full run of 150 sets to follow almost immediately after.

Before a single sheet hit the press, our pre-press review caught several issues in the supplied artwork, margins as tight as 0.8mm on both cards and carton (well inside safe tolerances for lamination and die-cutting), a card duplicated across two suit values, and nine further cards with incorrect suit assignments. We flagged the margin issue upfront and recommended a 3–4mm clear zone, corrected one artwork error in-house and communicated the remaining nine with visual references for the client to resolve. It's the kind of careful review that prevents costly reprints and we consider it part of every job.

The cards were printed on our Konica Minolta AccurioPress C4070, a machine built for colour-critical runs that demand consistency, CMYK both sides onto 300gsm satin stock, with matt scuff-resistant laminate applied to both sides before die-cutting to the finished 63×88mm size. The cartons were printed on Tiger FBB 260gsm cartonboard, matt laminated one side, then die-cut and glued on our JWEI 6040 digital cutter, no tooling required, precise results, fast setup.

Want something similar for your project? Get a free, no-obligation quote.