UnitedCardists.com - The forum for Cardistry, Magic, Custom Decks and All Things Playing Cards.

As an interim step on the way to a full 78 card [Crowley - Thoth inspired] tarot deck I've decided to design an astrology themed deck of playing cards. I will be using the astrological components of the Thoth deck, adding more elemental symbols and coloring it as a four color deck.

Zodiac signs will map to court cards... two way courts... and full bleed faces and backs. I have no idea of what the backs will look like at this point. I am posting a very preliminary mock-up of the Jacks.

As I wrap up my current KS project over the next month, I'll have more time to move this forward... I will post as milestones are reached. Any and all feedback and critiques are welcome - thanks.

those look pretty cool Stan

That's an interesting concept. Have you considered a dark blue background as opposed to gray?

Sher wrote:That's an interesting concept. Have you considered a dark blue background as opposed to gray?

This is a good suggestion. I've never liked any deck of cards I've seen that had a gray background, it just looks dull and boring. Dark blue would fit the theme much better.

Sher wrote:Have you considered a dark blue background...?

A dark blue background looks great for this, and gives a real night sky feel to the cards.

I have added pips to the courts and moved the tarot suit symbol inside the pip - clubs/wands, diamonds/disc, hearts/cups, and spades/swords. Above the pip it the court card's astrology symbol. The court card's elemental symbols (air, fire, water, earth) are in the upper right/lower left corners.

I am bringing in another artist to create custom zodiac illustrations for the courts to replace the from-the-web clip art being used for these mock-ups.

Hi Stand,
The cards looks nice, and the dark blue background works better than the grey.

I would suggest to move the astrology symbol and elemental symbol to upper right, parallel with the bottom index & pips. It will make the court artwork more pop without distracting by the symbol and it'd look good when doing left-handed fan. Also move the big-pips centered with the left small-pips.

Sorry for my english, if it confused you. I made a mock-up so you could see what I mean

Thank you <adhex5150> for your suggestions... they arrange and clean up the design nicely. About artwork for fanning - unless the deck is such that all the faces have the same artwork, isn't the back design what is really important?

Borrowing a page from the Forever Neon campaign (currently on KS), I want to go for spot color printing of the deck using neon (UV reactive) inks.

The more muted colors work much better. Not sure if UV inks is feasible, Ellusionist printed their black decks with that for a while until USPCC discontinued them. Or rather, they hiked up the price beyond the point of reason, but it had the same effect. Don't know about other printers though.

Btw, I see no mention of UV inks on the Forever Neon project page.

MagikFingerz wrote:Btw, I see no mention of UV inks on the Forever Neon project page.

That campaign does not mention UV inks, but looking at their graphics, I would imagine you would get a similar pop if the cards were printed with uv inks and shown under a black light.

UV inks on cards does seem much more like a novelty than anything else because how many folks play cards or do cardistry and magic under black light conditions.

I would suggest moving the suit badge on the right a bit more higher up. I leaves more room for the art and having the symbols on the top right again leaves more room for your artwork. I'm seeing the same stars in the background. Do you think we can have a real background of the constellation? Remember to mind your borders.

sprouts1115 wrote:I'm seeing the same stars in the background. Do you think we can have a real background of the constellation?

I knew somebody was going to go there - mainly because it was one of my first thoughts when the starfield was added as a background. As it turns out, I have a long time friend who is an astro-photographer, so I CAN get accurate (Northern Hemisphere) sky shots for the 12 constellations.

I'll do some experimenting to see how easy it will be to make the zodiac graphic superimpose [somewhat] accurately over the constellation stars.

With an illustrator on board, here is the current direction of the courts - this is Leo the lion. It is a very rough sketch - tail too big, rump too small, arm & paw being simplified and eliminating the two handed grip on the wand. Light background now with fill being worked on - probably a subtle tiling of the court's elemental signs. Court body decoration TBD, as is the back design, though some initial concepts are working their way to reality.

I'm guessing the old UV-500 stock is still possible to get (or at least a similar one). There's just one slight problem - USPCC needs you to purchase decks for the whole roll of paper if you want it, so we're talking somewhere around 160,000 decks.