How to use it
From nothing to a printed card in a few minutes. The short version: tell it who it’s for and how far away, generate, and print at 100%.
Quick start
- Set the profile. Guided: enter the date of birth and, for a premature baby, the gestational age at birth (weeks) — the tool computes corrected age. Direct: type a measured acuity (
20/200, logMAR, or cpd). Working from a CVI or low-vision assessment? The direct tab has two starting-point links that fill in sensible values and explain what they set. - Enter the viewing distance to the surface (the ceiling, the changing station, wherever the card will live). This is what sizes everything — so measure it rather than guessing.
- Choose your paper (A4 / US Letter / A3 / custom — auto-detected by region, editable).
- Generate and download the PDF, then print it — see the next section, which is the one step people get wrong.
Print at 100% (the one critical step)
In your print dialog, set scaling to “Actual size” / “100%” — never “Fit to page” or “Shrink to fit.” “Fit to page” silently resizes the image and destroys the exact scale the whole tool exists to get right.
Check your printer once on the dedicated check-your-printer page: print its sheet at 100% and measure the 100 mm bar. If it measures 100 mm (within about half a millimetre), every card you make after that is correctly sized. (Cards themselves are printed clean — no ruler, no caption — but you can switch a 100 mm bar back on per card under Advanced settings, and tiled posters always carry one on their assembly page.) More on why this matters: “Print at 100%.”
Tuning the pattern
- Boldness
- Slide toward bolder (chunkier, easier to see) for the youngest or most premature stage and the hardest, farthest surfaces; toward finer (more detail) for older babies or close surfaces. Details in “How big should it be?”
- Pattern family & complexity
- Families unlock by developmental stage, and complexity controls how busy the card is, independently of size. Start simple; add detail as vision matures. See the Goldilocks principle and what patterns babies prefer.
- Colour
- Newborn stages stay bold black & white on purpose (it’s the highest contrast). Colour unlocks in a research-backed order as vision develops. See “Colour, in order.”
- Variety
- Cards are made one at a time. For a few to rotate through, change the pattern family (or the seed, under Advanced settings) and download again — the same seed always reproduces the same card, so you can come back to one you liked.
Large prints (ceilings and walls)
When the pattern the distance calls for is bigger than one sheet, switch Large prints to Tiled (or leave it on Auto). The tool splits the image across an N×M grid of ordinary sheets with overlap, crop marks, and registration marks, plus a page-1 assembly guide. Print every page at 100%, trim, and align the overlaps. Full walkthrough: “Tiling explained.”
Use your own photo
Upload a photo (a parent’s face, the family pet, a favourite toy) and the tool converts it to a bold high-contrast card entirely on your device — it is never uploaded. Pick a conversion mode and fine-tune it with a live preview, including an “acuity preview” that blurs the result to simulate what the viewer will actually see. See “Turning a photo into a card.”
Using cards safely with a baby
The design is only half of it — how you use and mount a card matters more:
- Short, frequent, baby-led. A few minutes at a time; follow the baby’s interest, and stop when they look away. See how to use contrast cards and reading the “I’m done” signals.
- Mount securely; keep the sleep space clear. Nothing that could fall on or near a baby, and follow safe-sleep guidance — see mounting safely & safe sleep.
- Supplement, never replace, face-to-face time and professional care —here’s why.
Every tiled poster also comes with a printable usage & safety sheet, and you can download it on its own from the generator’s “Share & companion outputs” section.
Handy extras
- Share link. Copy a link that reproduces the design on another device — it carries only non-personal settings, never a date of birth or your photo (details).
- Install it / use it offline. Add it to your home screen or desktop; after the first visit it works with no connection — how & why.
- Advanced panel. Every parameter — attention cap, printer margin, ink polarity, output format (PDF / PNG / SVG), seed, and a switch to override stage gating.
Not a medical device. For premature, CVI, or low-vision care, follow your clinicians; this tool supplements professional care and defers to it. Please read the full disclaimer.