Designing Tokens and Counters for Your Tabletop Game: Shapes, Sizes and Printing

Tokens are the unglamorous part of a tabletop game: coins, damage markers, resource cubes, status counters. But during play, players look at tokens more than almost anything else. A token that's hard to read or hard to pick up makes every turn a little slower.

Here's how to design tokens that work, and make them at home.

What tokens are for

Tokens track things that change: how much gold you have, how hurt a unit is, whose turn it is, which effects are active. Good tokens let players answer "what's the state of the game?" with one glance at the table.

That suggests three rules:

1. Different jobs get different shapes. Round for currency, square for status, hex for terrain or territory.
2. One look, one meaning. A colour and an icon per token type, used consistently on tokens, cards and the rulebook.
3. Values players can read upside down. Big numbers, or no numbers at all.

Choosing shapes and sizes

Common sizes, and what they're good for:

Shape	Sizes	Good for
Round	25, 32 or 38 mm	Coins, resources, damage
Square	1 or 1.5 in	Status effects, markers on cards
Hex	2 or 3 in across the flats	Terrain tiles, territory, modular boards

The card size guide has pages for each, with trim, bleed and safe zone:

Card size guide and blank templates

Poker, bridge, tarot, mini, square and more card sizes, with tokens, hex tiles and game boards: trim, bleed and safe zone in mm, inches and pixels at 300 DPI, and a free blank template for each, as a PNG with guides or a printable PDF sheet.

A few rules of thumb:

• 25 mm is the smallest round token most people pick up easily. Go bigger for anything with a number on it.
• Tokens placed on cards must fit the space on the card without covering important text.
• Hex tiles that fit together need consistent sizing: pick one size and stick to it.

Designing for a glance

• Use icons, not words. A skull reads faster than "Damage". The free icon browser has thousands of game icons you can recolour:

Game icon browser

Search over 4,000 free game icons from game-icons.net, recolour them, put them on a background and download an SVG or a PNG up to 2048 px, with the credit the license asks for ready to copy. Free, in your browser, with no sign-up.

• Use the same icon on cards. If a card says "gain 2 {coin}", the coin icon in the text should match the coin token on the table. In Decklab AI, icons sit inline in card text, so cards and tokens can share the same symbols.
• Make denominations distinct. A 1-coin and a 5-coin should differ in size or colour, not just the number.
• Leave a margin. Keep the icon and number away from the edge; round and hex tokens are hard to cut perfectly.

Printing a token sheet

The free token sheet maker turns images or typed labels into a print-and-play sheet:

Token and counter sheet maker

Make printable tokens and counters from your images or typed labels: pick round, square or hex, the size and how many of each, and download a print-and-play PDF with cut outlines, or a PNG of each token. Free, in your browser, with no sign-up.

• Pick round, square or hex, the size, and how many of each.
• Upload images, or type one label per line (1, 2, 5 and 10 for coins), or both: a number on a coin picture.
• Add a back image for double-sided tokens.

Round and hex tokens get a thin cut outline rather than cut marks, with the art running 3 mm past it, so a cut slightly outside the line shows no white edge. Square tokens get cut marks.

Cutting and mounting

• Paper tokens are fine for a first test, but they slide and blow away.
• Card stock is better. A circle punch the token's size makes round tokens quick and neat.
• Mounted tokens are best: glue the printed sheet to thick card or chipboard before cutting. Double-sided tokens become sturdy counters.
• Shortcut: stick printed labels on poker chips, wooden discs or cheap plastic counters.

Printer calibration page

Print one Letter or A4 page with a 50 mm square, a poker card outline and rulers to check your printer prints cards at the right size, and learn how to fix it when it doesn’t. Free, in your browser, with no sign-up.

How many do you need?

Play a game and count the most of each token anyone used, then add 25%. Running out mid-game is worse than having a few spare. Write the counts down; they'll go in the rulebook's component list.

Put tokens in the project

If you make your game in Decklab AI, tokens are components like cards, with the same sizes, bleed and exports, so the whole game prints from one project.