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.