Designing a deck, would love to get your opinions...

Designing a deck? Need input? Show us here!
TheCartographers
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Designing a deck, would love to get your opinions...

Unread post by TheCartographers »

Hi all,

I'm designing a deck of playing cards called The Cartographers.
I want to make this deck with the community in mind, so I've created a website with a poll so you can pick your favourite design so far and help direct this project.

If enough interest is generated, the end goal is to get these cards crowd funded though Kickstarter!
I've already sampled these card to magicians - so now it's the cardists turn. :)

Please let me know if you've got any suggestions or feedback by replying to this or emailing me via my website.

VOTE HERE: http://www.TheCartographers.co.uk

Thanks in advance.
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ecNate
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Re: Designing a deck, would love to get your opinions...

Unread post by ecNate »

Honestly, I could blindly vote the back design, but depending on what the cards fronts look like could make one design fit or the other not. Will these all be standard courts and pips or is this a fully custom deck? For now I'll just say the first one just looks like a Rider Back variation and you lose the directional indicator focus so I would lean towards the 2nd, but it's a bit plain. Also, I'll beat sprouts and others to this - use thinner boarders!
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Re: Designing a deck, would love to get your opinions...

Unread post by TheCartographers »

Hey,

Thanks for the reply.
I always appreciate honesty.

The plan is to use standard faces (only custom Ace of Spades and Joker - of which I'm still designing).
I might add a stretch goal on the Kickstarter for the creation of custom faces, but honestly, I don't think there's much wrong with standard faces, and I quite like them myself.

The Classic design was designed with classic decks in mind, hence the immediate structure similarities.

You're not the first to tell me to use thinner borders. A couple of others have mentioned it too. I'm working on a design with thinner borders.
I see two options:
1) Literally expand everything and reduce the white space.
2) Remove the outer blue border (the bit with the lines attached to squares) and expand the remainder outward too.

I've attached a mockup image for reference.
Attachments
5 Design Mock Up2.jpg
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blejanre
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Re: Designing a deck, would love to get your opinions...

Unread post by blejanre »

I like #5 best, I don't think it's too plain, it looks classy to me. Agreed about the smaller border though. As small as the manufacturer is willing to go as far as I'm concerned. If you go standard faces, don't recolor them or anything. That always looks bad in my opinion. I have to ask though, who is your "audience"? Are you selling to collectors? Cardists? What sets your deck apart? I'm new to the scene so there might be a demand for decks like these that I don't know about, but I wouldn't be interested in buying a custom deck that has only backs AoS and jokers. I do like the back design a lot though.
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sprouts1115
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Re: Designing a deck, would love to get your opinions...

Unread post by sprouts1115 »

TheCartographers - Looks like you have a center element with 2 duel reflecting elements. You have one with a broad square outer border and one with a small rounded outer border. It's pretty typical. I've notice a lot of people lately have been putting corner badges in the BackOfCard to show up in the fans. Your fan looks to be boring with a weak corner badge in both backs... Read later posts to learn. Blue on white is fine. You just don't pull it here...
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Re: Designing a deck, would love to get your opinions...

Unread post by TheCartographers »

blejanre wrote:I like #5 best, I don't think it's too plain, it looks classy to me. Agreed about the smaller border though. As small as the manufacturer is willing to go as far as I'm concerned. If you go standard faces, don't recolor them or anything. That always looks bad in my opinion. I have to ask though, who is your "audience"? Are you selling to collectors? Cardists? What sets your deck apart? I'm new to the scene so there might be a demand for decks like these that I don't know about, but I wouldn't be interested in buying a custom deck that has only backs AoS and jokers. I do like the back design a lot though.
Hey,
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Smaller borders do look good! - I'll see what the manufacturer will allow.

I don't plan on recolouring the faces if I stick with standard. I really quite like standard faces anyway.

My target audience is magicians - I want for people to actively perform with these cards which is why I've designed them (at least the classic version) to closely resemble classically styled cards, like bikes for example. I want people to feel that they can use these cards freely without generating suspicion. Again, another reason why I wanted to keep the faces as standard as possible.
I had plans to add special features to these cards - so I designed the backs to allow for marks whilst also remaining similar to classic cards again, as to not rouse suspicion from the audience.
However, I realise that not everyone wants a marked deck, and so for first release I've kept it simple and haven't marked anything.

Perhaps it's something I should have considered more closely when creating the website and created another poll asking if people would prefer a marked or non-marked deck.

The majority of voters so far have selected the classical design over the sleeker one.
At the time of writing, from all the places I've sampled I've had 175 votes in total, so we're looking at:
Classical: 121 votes
Sleek: 54 votes
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Re: Designing a deck, would love to get your opinions...

Unread post by TheCartographers »

sprouts1115 wrote:TheCartographers - Looks like you have a center element with 2 duel reflecting elements. You have one with a broad square outer border and one with a small rounded outer border. It's pretty typical. I've notice a lot of people lately have been putting corner badges in the BackOfCard to show up in the fans. Your fan looks to be boring with a weak corner badge in both backs... Read later posts to learn. Blue on white is fine. You just don't pull it here...
Thanks for the message, I appreciate it.
I was wondering if you could elaborate a little more on this? - Corner badges?

Any suggestions for design improvements?

Thanks.
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