Before the art hits the computer

King of Wands: Ascension Tarot

If there is one thing that I've learned before starting an art project, it is to plan everything out in advance.  This is true for the deck I'm making because any layout decisions will have to be carried through for each of the 72 upcoming cards.  So good decisions will help me for the rest of this project, or haunt me every step of the way.

To keep everything going smoothly and to limit the possibility that I'll have to go back and rework a bunch of stuff, I spent a lot of time deciding on the layout for the cards.  This is a project that I've wanted to do for awhile, and not just for grins.  I want the end result to mean something.  It has to do more than just look, good and pretty.  It has to successfully fulfill mechanical functions as well as aesthetic ones.

This deck must:
1) Have the suit and numbers easily visible and readable at a glance.
2) The suit and numbers must be in the upper left corner of each card
3) The suit icon must be immediately obvious, so as not to be confused with another suit.
4) Suits must be colored red and black, and have each icon unique and clear against the background.
5) Minor Arcana and Major Arcana must be equal in their level of visual interest.
6) Each card must have a scroll and the scroll have text large enough to be read easily

Here is the real genius of this project.
Anyone who has had a tarot reading has noticed that tarot cards are divided up into two groups: major and minor arcana.  Whether they know it or not, the mind puts these into groups of importance.  So when a minor arcana card comes into the reading, the person is tempted to dismiss it as less important than a major arcana card.  This is misleading because for the reading, all cards are of equal importance.  But when you see cards that have descriptions of "Death" and "The Devil", it's hard to explain that something like "3 of pentacles" has the same weight in the reading.
I'm going to address this by making sure that every card has something eye-catching and impressive about it, no matter what arcana suit it is.  This will be nice because it seems a shame to just outright dismiss a card because it's not "The Tower" or "The Emperor".  Since the cards could potentially be used for divination, I'm hoping that every card that appears in a spread is visually interesting.

Ace of Wands: Ascension Tarot Deck

Ace of Wands

This is going to be the starting point for the tarot deck I am creating.  For a long time, and I really mean a LONG time, I've thought how great it would be to have a tarot deck designed that could be easily used for card games.

Everyone who has handled a deck of tarot cards before knows that the suits and numbers of tarot match very well with the standard poker deck.  The obvious thing to do next is to play card games with tarot cards because they are more fun to look at and are more exotic than the usual hearts-and-club suits.  In fact, almost all games can be played using tarot cards instead of Hoyle.

The difficulty arrives when the cards are held in the hand.  Standard playing cards have the number and suit markers in the upper left corner, so that when the cards are fanned out in the hand they are all immediately identified.  This makes matching very easy.  Tarot cards are designed differently.  In addition to being a longer and thinner dimension than standard cards, the suit indicators are normally at the top or bottom.  In short, playing card games with tarot cards isn't as intuitive.

This difference rules out tarot games because of ease of use.  If you can't tell immediately what the cards in your hand are, matching and playing becomes more difficult and less fun.  So towards that end, I'm creating a deck using standard sized cards and normal suit markers.  Yes, the symbol will be different as in the pictured example above, but seeing what suit you are holding is easy.  Fanning the cards in your hand is just as simple as normal and the only difficulty facing me so far is coming up with all the artwork for such a large deck!

New Cards?

Actually, yes!  I've been tossing around the idea of a deck of tarot cards which can double as a playing card deck for awhile, and I think the time has finally come to make this idea a reality.  I've got a format and layout completed, and decided on a style that would be fun to do for 70+ cards, and yet can realistically be accomplished in a time frame that keeps this project from being a neverending slog.  Stay tuned, and I'll keep posting updates!