So, the big concept with my IA Summit poster on page patterns is that visitors will be encouraged to create their own deliverable on the fly, taking pattern cards from the library of ingredients and placing them in the deliverable slots. Creating the actual cards was a real exercise that lasted about three hours, including photos and this writeup.

Step 1: Create Page Pattern Cards PDF

I started by using InDesign (obviously) to create a page pattern card template with appropriate master (obviously) for each page of four card containers (obviously). Then, place screenshots of the patterns into the containers (obviously) via drag and drop, fit to the appropriately sized containers (obviously), and move onto the next page. Why is everything obvious? Well, it was rewarding to know that creating the page pattern cards was almost exactly like using the page patterns themselves for an actual deliverable.

The master include cut guides to facilitate cutting and exact sizes later, as well as the hole location I’ll use for punching each hole. The proportion of cards for each pattern is roughly equivalent to their frequency of use, popularity, and what stories I want to tell. This first step ended with a trial print and then PDF of the 40 page document of 160 cards.

Step 2: Create the Business Card Document Metadata

On the reverse of each card is my blog address, my name, my business email address, and my phone number. While I hope to encourage visitors to participate, I’ll also offer that they take their favorite or most interesting card home with them and communicate with me later if this is a technique they embrace themselves.

Step 3: Printing

All cards were printed in color on an HP Color Laserjet 3600n using glossy HP Brochure & Flyer paper. Such paper is a heavier stock that’s far more appropriate for cards since they will be shifted, shuffled, hung from push pins, and taken home by interested visitors.

Step 4: Cutting

Using my kitchen’s somewhat smaller cutting board, I proceeded to cut 8 slices per page followed by folding and tearing to remove the cards from their source sheet. The process took about 1 1/4 minutes for each page, and efficiencies learned over time sped up the process, like:

• Pin knife on top guide, press steel ruler edge against the knife, and then rotate ruler to align with bottom guide. This is far faster than just moving the no-slide ruler atop the paper by hand to align with both guides simultaneously.
• Try to get the knife’s edge as parallel with the paper as possible. This results in a deeper and easier cut than if the knife is perpendicular to the paper.
• After cutting, fold the paper along all cuts as a paper page overall instead of just starting to peel out individual cards. By folding both ways along each cut, separation was sped up since multiple cards shared each fold.

Step 5: Punching Holes

With the 1/8 inch hole on each card’s front side, it was easy to precisely cut a hole with a 1/4 inch hole punch by aligning the puncher circle’s bottom edge with the printed circle’s bottom edge. I even started doubling up cards with confidence since the cuts had been so exact.

Step 6: Clean Up

Yeah, there’s alot of extra scraps that result, thrown to the floor as each page is cut. I’ve not completed that step yet.

So there you go, 160 “trading” cards for placing page patterns on the poster. Should be fun! See you at the IA Summit in Miami later this week…