I have been doing my own J-cards for some years. I started drawing a template in Macromedia Freehand (which although outdated it's one of the best design software out there). I have my own templates, but I understand that Freehand is not and easy to use software for everybody (it's a professional grade design software), so I thought it would be nice if I could make one for the worldwide known MS Word, and I finally did. And I'm giving it to you now for free. To use it you just need your own MS Word, version 2007 or newer, because it's not a .doc but a .docx document. It contains a J-card and two different inner stickers with rounded holes or a window. It's very easy to use but you need at least a basic knowledge of Word. You can add your own text and an image. To change the image you have to: Select the desired card/sticker (click in the border, not in the text) and do right click. Select Shape format... Go to Fill and click over File... to choose your own image (only one allowed). Readjust the offset so it looks as you wish Click Close. To change the text, just click over it and change it to your taste. If you want the stickers the same, just delete one of them and copy-paste the other to make a copy. NOTE: Be sure to not move the circles or rounded rectangle or it won't fit in the cassette holes. Just download it, decompress it (use the provided password), open it in Word and customize to your needs. Then for printing you need to be sure to choose the "No scaling" or "100% scale" or "No resizing" option so the printed card measures exactly what it's in this document. I'll make a detailed tutorial to use it very soon! Leave your comments! Any feedback is welcomed. UPDATE: Here's a link to the full article in my blog.
Here's a real print of the template: I have done lots of different J-cards for my kids to help them identify their own cassettes, so they can listen to whatever one when they want, without my help: These are some of the custom J-cards I've made to my youngest son (3 yr old now). As you can see, most are from the cartoons he like. And here you can see some custom stickers I've made to my oldest son (8 yr old now). Some have 3-4 years now; some are recent (like the one of Police and Linking Park). For printing J-cards, a good photographic paper of about 135-150 gr/m2 will be fine (preferably from the same brand of your printer, to ensure good color rendering). For the stickers it's best that you look for an inkjet adhesive paper, preferably in full A4 sheets so you can then cut to your needs. To cut the inner holes of the stickers I use a nail scissor which is small enough for that
I've made many a J-card on the bedroom printer just using MS Paint, but I've never made labels - I really like 'em!
Ok, done. Here's the promised tutorial: Read the detailed, step-by-step tutorial Any feedback is welcome
I read the whole article on your site. Very simple and well explained. I can tell that you spent a lot of time to prepare this step by step guidance. I remember using Corel Draw to customize labels in 90s. anyway, thanks for sharing this file and for allowing people to use your photos for personal use
Thank you so much for commenting. I'm curious to see what others do with it. I really hope they help putting on paper what you have in your mind
I just designed some using MS Word 2017. The only problem I have is i cannot add a photo to it, only text or colour.
Read the full article and tutorial and try again, please. If that doesn't work, let me know what kind of error do you get... http://www.walkman-archive.com/wa/2017/01/making-custom-labels-j-cards-for-your-cassettes/
Hi guys. I have some news: I've updated the J-card to offer three different generations of J-card, going from the early ones to the Slim case and the late 80s 'rounded' case. So now you have the early one (13 mm), the rounded one (12 mm) and the slim one (11 mm). You can download the file here: http://www.stereo2go.com/walkman-archive/Cassette-Labels&J-Cards-v2-Walkman-Archive.zip The password to open the ZIP is the same as the early one: S2Gjcard'17 Plase show your own j-cards made with this template