In February of 2022,Punjabi Wordlewent live. At some point I thought about making stickers to celebrate - I finally got around to it this month. Here are two pictures:
Like the online game, the stickers come in light and dark mode. The Wordle grid shows a plausible game with real words. At the bottom right, the text "punjabi wordle" rounds the corner.
I had a few requirements:
Finding reasonable guess-words was a little tricky. They needed to match the vowel pattern of ਪੰਜਾਬੀ. I tried a small program to find possible options. There weren't many, so I pickedਸੰਸਾਰੀandਬੰਧਾਨੀ.
I don't know much about graphic design. I thought about creating the grid background from scratch in Photoshop or Gimp, but knew it'd take me a while. Since this was just for fun, I tried something hacky. I served a local version of the game and forced the answer to be ਪੰਜਾਬੀ. Then I played as usual with my chosen guesses. Lastly, I zoomed in and took a screenshot. I repeated this process in dark mode and light mode. This approach has drawbacks - a screenshot is not vector artwork. But I figured it might work for my purposes.
Once I had the basic grid down, I wanted to add "Punjabi Wordle" somewhere in English. I kept it simple again and added some text annotations using Preview. There were a few ideas:
I picked my favorite from the options above and also sent it to a few friends for advice. We agreed on the last rounded-corner option.
I spent some time researching printing options. There are many online services that accept an image file and send you a pack of physical stickers. I ended up picking Die Cut Stickers because they're also based in the Pacific Northwest. I sent over my image files, got a quote, and received the stickers soon afterwards! For me they turned out well, especially given screenshots and Preview.
I didn't have time to send the stickers right away. Around December of 2022, I posted about them on social media. I like sending end-of-year letters, so it lined up well. Including a written postcard alongside the sticker also helped guard against warping or bending. After some assembling, I dropped them off at the post office. Here's a picture:
So far stickers have made it to friends in California, New York, and Canada as well! It was fun to see things come together.
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