What is the deal? What is so special about playing cards anyway?
You need to know a little bit of history to fully appreciate this. My father was a graphic designer. Actually he was an illustrator, but there are only so many agencies that will hire you as JUST an illustrator, so that morphed into graphic design, especially when he went solo. And as he would point out, most designers can’t do illustrations if the health of their first-born depended on it. You have to actually know how to draw…. But most people that can do illustrations are perfectly equipped to do design.
Anyway, the point is I have been beaten around the head with the rules of good design from an early age. And playing cards, the well designed ones, are marvels of the universe in both function and artistry. They are at once, works of art (portraits), signage (you should be able to instantly recognize which cards you are holding), an indexing system (I don’t need to explain that one, do I?), and a lot more… Bookmarks, business cards, 52 sales people in a box…
And it’s my appreciation for design (look at this site, I said I appreciate it, not that I was good at it) that got me here. Designing playing cards is a skilled craft, an art form almost. Or maybe entirely.
If you throw card magic in the mix… Now a spectator in the 10th row also has to instantly recognize which of 52 three and a half by two and a half inch pieces of cardboard you are holding up…
Good design is good bad design is bad… Yeah no sh*t, Sherlock! I have some of the most beautiful playing cards in my small collection. See the Paisley cards in an earlier post, but also the NPH deck by Theory11 comes to mind. But when design goes bad… Oh boy!
Have a look at this crap! This is the 2 of Spades, 2 of Hearts and 7 of Spades out of the Worx deck by Cardcutz. For your viewing pleasure, I turned all 3 cards upside down. Spades normally have a stem, but some buffoon decided to take it off.
That stem is actually important. It makes the Spade stand out from say a Heart. Some smarty pants is going to say something about the color now… Hold your breath. I deliberately took this photo in a dimly lit room. Believe it or not, that’s where a lot of people will play games. I mean, you are not going to play strip poker with the overhead fluorescents on full nuclear blast strength, now are you?
So with the ambiguity of the shapes you have to rely on color. Only the outlines are an actual different color! Who decided this was a good idea?
Don’t get me wrong, Cardcutz makes some excellent cards. See for yourself. But Worx certainly isn’t it!
I am going to say one more thing, the grouping of the 7s (and the 6s for that matter)… That’s it, no more!