Did I tell you I was on VERO yet? Oh yeah, I did! Photos are so hard though. It’s surprisingly difficult to get good photos of playing cards. I’ll get there I am sure, meanwhile though the poor people on VERO (and sometimes Instagram and also Facebook) will have to sit through efforts like this. Yeah that is #batman in the middle there. Taking his rightful spot as the center bitch. Playing with your queens of hearts, you know that it ain’t really smart….

I am a feminist. No really! 

Actually I am not so sure that I know exactly what a feminist is. I do know this. I have 2 sisters. I also have 2 daughters. And a wife. And many female friends, and co-workers, and people I see at the grocery store. And… I quite frankly am weirded out that a certain (large) percentage of the world’s population has to go through more trials and tribulations than us guys. So I was extremely happy to find out that magician Rosemary Reid has decided to create a deck of playing cards that specifically addresses issues that female performers face… Yes in 2022, some 25% of female magicians surveyed reported being groped during a gig! WTF guys? Nobody is squeezing your balls while you perform an ACAAaaaaAaaAaaaNNNnn (sorry, nerdy magician joke).

Go support this initiative. Each court card in the deck (which has awesome artwork)  encourages the adoption of open, honest, and respectful communication around a theme, From experiencing sexism to not having access to equal education opportunities, women around the world face issues that men simply don’t… and this is 2023 for crying out loud! Find all the deets HERE

VERO is one of those apps that gets it. It’s #insta without the crap from Zuckerburger. No advertising and promoted shit and data-mining you didn’t ask for (or so they say). It’s awesome! Were it not for the fact that its founder, one Ayman Hariri, is a billionaire businessman of French-Lebanese origin with ties to Saudi Oger, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest construction companies, primarily known for not paying their migrant workers. If the name Hariri seems familiar, its likely because Aymen is the son of Rafic Hariri, the former prime-minister of Lebanon who was involved in some high profile corruption scandals while in office. In February of 2005, Rafic was assassinated  in Beirut when explosives equivalent to around 1,800 kilograms of TNT concealed inside a parked vehicle were detonated as his motorcade drove past. 23 people died in the blast.

So you know, VERO has good pedigree! Needless to say, I am on VERO.

For the most part it’s just a nice way of not bothering my Instagram folks with all the insane card stuff. Only my playing card stillfies (still lifes for the Zoomer age) are on VERO. Look for the pseudonym Jay Zondervan. One of my latest concoctions is a pic of a very cool deck of cards by #ellusionist. It’s called Pioneers. It was designed to resemble a pack of souvenir cards from the Chicago World Fair of 18 hundred something.

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! 

LOOK HERE INSTEAD!

So it’s not that I am newly obsessed with playing cards, more that I rediscovered an old obsession. And now that I am regressing back into my youth (yeah I am that old) and also have some semblance of disposable income… Well, I figured now that I have as many years under my belt as there are cards in a standard deck, I should spend some time with pieces of pasteboard. Honestly, it’s the “cool” kid’s version of collecting postage stamps. Where stamps have monarchs and politicians and famous landmarks and… Boring! Playing cards with their saloon-style, poker night flavour conjure up images of bourbon soaked all-nighters. But to be fair to postage stamps, collecting playing cards is every bit as nerdy… Just in a different way. I mean, I have invested in a storage system. Granted, it’s just a box, but still… A storage system! Is this box acid-free? I asked the sales-guy, I want my disposable pieces of mass-produced paper to still be there when my kid’s kids learn to play poker. Don’t touch that! It’s an antique!