[Deck in development] Playing cards + Tarot

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munik
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[Deck in development] Playing cards + Tarot

Unread post by munik »

Hello everybody!

I'm a graphic designer and as a personal project I'm trying to develop a tarot/playing card deck, I have the idea to unite the Rider Waite tarot deck (which is the most common tarot deck) and the standard French playing cards, since they have a shared history somewhere down the line it seemed to me like an interesting idea.

I want to make the deck as approachable and basic as possible, my goal is to take the Rider Waite illustrations and bring them way down to their basic meaning, while keeping in mind the original illustrations. Right now I used the original Rider Waite illustrations just to sketch and get an idea of how to interpret the tarot suits to the French playing card suits, but eventually I will make custom illustrations. (See the attached image.)

I would like your honest opinion about the project, the idea is still very much in development.
I'm not sure if this project interests you guys but I thought there's no harm in trying and see what you have to say!

I'm very much a newbie to designing playing cards, so I'm very open to any suggestions and critique. :)
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Re: [Deck in development] Playing cards + Tarot

Unread post by NineLives »

Hi Munik,

Thanks for sharing and definitely looking forward to see where you take this :)

I like how you introduce the star indice for the Major Arcana, it's a clever and simple way to distinguish these cards from the rest of the deck.

Because you are creating a tarot and playing card deck, I suggest you use dual symbols on all the suit cards (wands/clubs, cups/hearts... and so on). Depending on your layout preference, the symbols could be vertically placed together - or by using all four corners of the card...

Also, there is a difference between the resemblance to form (8 of clubs/wands) and illustration (2 of hearts/cups). Keeping to the same style / visual language for related cards (courts, numbers, majors/trumps) will give you more consistency, which helps bring the deck together. I understand that you are still working out ideas, so it's just a thought to keep in the back of your head :)

A small point about titles ... at the current size/placement you might run into problems with the longer titles, like HIEROPHANT and TEMPERANCE ... which is obviously easy to fix :)
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Re: [Deck in development] Playing cards + Tarot

Unread post by munik »

NineLives wrote:Also, there is a difference between the resemblance to form (8 of clubs/wands) and illustration (2 of hearts/cups). Keeping to the same style / visual language for related cards (courts, numbers, majors/trumps) will give you more consistency, which helps bring the deck together.
Hey Ninelives, I especially found your point above very useful, I'm defintely going to try to give the illustrations a more universal feel eventually.
As to your suggestion about the double suits, that's definitely something for me to think about, but only if it doesn't make the cards overly complex which I'm a bit worried that it might.
Thanks a lot for your feedback, very useful stuff! :D
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Re: [Deck in development] Playing cards + Tarot

Unread post by Azazaaz »

Hi Munik!

I'm sure you've seen before the Arcana playing cards by Chris Ovdiyenko (Dead On Paper). These decks already merged the tarot and the poker sized playing cards. They're a good exemple of what Annette (NineLives) mentioned earlier about the double symbols.

Now, about the illustrations, I think I can see where this is coming from. To me, your 8 of clubs / 8 of wands have the spots in the same areas as the ends of the wands depicted on the Rider Waite card. Maybe, you should just have the wands depicted on there as well to make the design a bit more busy so it doesn't distract as much from the rest of the cards? I'm not a designer so this might be the silliest thing to say.
Anyway, I like where this is going, there are already some decks where the number cards are the same as on a poker deck. This would be a change.

The only thing I personally think is missing is some of the symbols used in the tarot that are not there on your aces if you're going this route. But it's up to you of course to choose what elements of the original design you want in there!

Keep up the great work! :D
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Re: [Deck in development] Playing cards + Tarot

Unread post by RichK »

I don't know a thing about tarot decks but I do like the way your 2 & 5 of Hearts have a "transformation" deck look to them. The Aces are nice too. Any thought of that style of deck if the art allows it?
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Re: [Deck in development] Playing cards + Tarot

Unread post by MagikFingerz »

I agree with Rich, the transformation (or semi-transformation) aspect is definitely something you should pursue if you haven't done so already.

Regarding the two types of symbols, how about combining them? The bottom part of the clubs could be made into part of a wand, have the diamonds sticking out of cups, and so on. Just a suggestion, it might work and it might look terrible. But it could be worth trying out, just to see.
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Re: [Deck in development] Playing cards + Tarot

Unread post by ecNate »

(semi) transformation style and tarot theme has me interested, so definitely looking to hear more about this.

My only initial comment is I think you could expand the artwork of the figures, especially the major cards. To really let the artwork shine I think you could fill quite a bit of the current white space, even pushing indicies further to the edges/corners. However, this appears to be a bridge card deck, moving to poke would give you a wider card that isn't so narrow to better fill the space. Also, most collectors and players prefer poker over bridge, so if you want to make a tarot deck accessible moving from tarot dimensions to poker would be better than bridge if you can make the artwork fit in that space.
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