For the the 2024 Passporto game, we ended up with 50 "visa" stamps as shown on the start page for this project.
These stamp designs and the process of making them owe a lot to what we did in previous years, back to the first game in 2022. Since we never wrote up the 2022 or 2023 projects, this description will cover all three games.
In the first version of the game we made an (it turns out incorrect) assumption about how folks would play the game. We thought that would want to experience something that reminded them of real world passports and stamps as much as possible. Nope, but more about that later.
Just as we started with real world passport designs on which to base the Passporto design, we started with real world visa stamp designs for the Passporto stamps. From these examples, all we needed to do was make the details specific to JoCo Cruise.
Time for some Google image searches.
These stamp designs and the process of making them owe a lot to what we did in previous years, back to the first game in 2022. Since we never wrote up the 2022 or 2023 projects, this description will cover all three games.
In the first version of the game we made an (it turns out incorrect) assumption about how folks would play the game. We thought that would want to experience something that reminded them of real world passports and stamps as much as possible. Nope, but more about that later.
Just as we started with real world passport designs on which to base the Passporto design, we started with real world visa stamp designs for the Passporto stamps. From these examples, all we needed to do was make the details specific to JoCo Cruise.
Time for some Google image searches.
It also wasn't hard to find stamps with a variety of shapes. Plenty to adapt for our own designs. These stamps also gave us good examples of typography, graphics, and text layouts. There is such wide variation in designs that we could have concluded that anything goes, but we decided to stick pretty close to these designs. |
Now that we had a sense for the sort of designs we needed, we had to choose the places in the ship where a stamp could go. It would be nice to think we had some systemic way to choose, but in reality we just looked at the deck plans of the Nieuw Amsterdam on the HAL website and picked some. |
You'll probably be happy to be spared all the details of the semi-competent thrashing around in Illustrator that ensued.
What counts is where we ended up. And here it is. The keen eyed observer will note that there are no dates on these designs. That's because we weren't sure there was going to be a JoCo Cruise 2022. So, just in case it was delayed we made the designs reference that the next sailing would be number 11, no matter when it was. |
The next step was to fire up the laser and make prototype stamps to check the design work. We have an Epilog laser and engraved all the stamps on laser engravable rubber from Johnson Plastics. Oh, and the "No Odor" thing? Total nonsense. Less odor maybe, but engraving the rubber was still a smelly business. |
As soon as the stamp prototypes were finished, two things became obvious:
First, the stamps were HUGE. Somehow we ended up with a basic size of 44 mm x 44mm and this was way too big relative to the size of the Passporto. Let's not think too hard about how we got all the way to making all 26 stamps before we figured this out. Second, using manual stamps mounted to wood blocks with a seperate ink pad was a recipe for an inky disaster. We had to bite the bullet and get self-inking stamps. This decision dramatically increased the cost of the stamps. Instead of a few dollars each for the homebrewed stamp and pad, we needed to buy a LOT of expensive self-inking stampers. |
To revise the designs for both size and compatibility with self-inking stamps, we had to choose a model of self-inking stamp to use.
After a bunch of surfing around the internet, we found rubberstamps.net. They sell a huge variety of self-inking stamps and we settled on the Trodat 4923 with a 1 1/8" x 1 1/8" plate as a standard size. Look for lots more details on making the rubber stamps on the Buying self-Inking rubber stamps page. |
Designs for JoCo Passporto 2023 For 2023, we followed the same plan and reused a lot of the designs. All new art was still required because each of the stamps was dated. And new art meant new stamps. More on minimizing the impact of this later. We did add a few things for 2023 to keep it fresh for the players. First, we added a bunch of stamps (mostly for the various ships's decks and ports of call) to bring the total to 40. Second, we made a poster to hang outside our cabin showing all of the stamps we made. That way, folks who wanted clues as to how many stamps there were and where they might be could come by our cabin and see. |
We joined in the spirit of the Shadow Stamps by creating a few personal designs and left the stamps by our cabin door.
The keen eyed observer will notice a common element in these stamps. |
Because the players didn't seem to care much about the designs being similar to real passport stamps, we took a free hand with the 2024 stamp redesigns to just draw things we thought looked cool.
One new feature was the use of a lot of very small text (also a feature of a lot of recent fauxstage stamp designs for the JoCoNaut Postcard Trading Alliance). Rubberstamps.net design guidelines for text of 8 point or larger are pretty conservative of necessity. They are selling to the (shudder) general public after all and can't rely on people to have reasonable expectations. Looking at the Arcade stamp from 2022/2023, it's clear that sometimes much smaller text could work. The A R C A D E inside the little Space Invaders sprites are much smaller than 8 point and they worked fine, at least for our expectations of fine. |
That's it for the design work. Time to get some stamps made.