Quality Guidelines and a BIG Thank You!

Hey everyone! First of all, we all want to thank you so much for joining our community, making and contributing your very own Switch spines! We had no idea this community would grow in the way that it did, and we have all of you to thank for that.

With this in mind, we have some things we’d like to share regarding the quality of the spines submitted. First and foremost, consistently high-quality contributors will receive a special "Spine Master" flare for this subreddit, and access to the Spine Master Lounge - an exclusive chat room! This is to incentivise posts that follow our quality guidelines (which I’ll get into in a minute). On the other side of the coin, we do want to make sure that this subreddit is a database for spines that are high-quality so that people looking for the spines can use them in their own collections. Because of this, we will be deleting any posts that have 0 upvotes after a week.

If you find yourself in this situation, please do not be disheartened! Again, we massively appreciate the contribution and we absolutely want you to keep making spines! We want to encourage a fun and relaxing community, but we must ask that spines retain a consistent quality. Without further ado, here are some guidelines for making sure your spine is a great one!

##Readable Spine:

Make sure your logo’s not too small on the spine. Remember that Switch spines are very slim, so if the text is too small it’s not going to be readable at all on a spine. This might mean that you need to make alterations to the original logo to improve readability. For more advice, check out my detailed Photoshop tutorial here.

##Use high-res images: Try to find the best quality possible when searching for images to use on your spine. As a general rule, for background images anything over 1000px in height should suffice. Also make sure you’re using the official Photoshop templates which can be found here, unless of course you’re making your own templates! Try not to scale images up too much from their original resolution, as this will result in low-quality images.

• Tip: If you find an image you like but it’s too low-res, try right clicking and then clicking “Search Google for this image”. Then, under the text “find other sizes of this image”, click the largest size possible.

##Developer/Publisher Logos: To give the spines here a sense of uniformity, try placing a developer or publisher logo at the bottom of the spine. For more info on developer logos, take a look in the extended Photoshop tutorial.

##Keep text within boundaries: Make sure your logo text doesn’t spill out of the sides of the spine. Try to keep a small gap between the logo and each edge of the spine.

##Use correct title formatting: This one’s more of an admin note, but please make sure that your titles follow the correct title format in the rules: [GAME TITLE] by [CREATOR]. This is so that people can search for either the creator or the game and find your spines easily. Please do not write “by me” or omit the creator name. We’ll warn you the first time, but posts that break this rule after a warning will be deleted.

##That's all! For more detailed advice on making spines in Photoshop, have a read through my Photoshop tutorial!

Thanks again for joining us here at r/SwitchSpines, we can’t wait to see what else you guys make!