Playing card designs

'Each card bares the familiar form of each suit but in a carefully reconstructed geo-metric form that resemble precious diamonds or crystal-like structures.'

'From seeing other designers doing there own they often left the hearts, clubs,spades and diamonds icons the same, but I wanted to change them so this is what i have come up with. I like the linear aesthetic to them along with the simplicity.'

I have kept looking out for card designs which I really like, there are so many different styles that people have made, its quite difficult to choose the style I want to move forward with. I will need to make this decision quite quickly, since there is a lot of different imagery to consider once a style is chosen it will still take a while to create each separate design.

Jim Sutherland, from Hat-trick Design, has designed a set of typographic playing cards. It was a personal project with the basic guidelines being: design a full set of playing cards (52 + jokers and a cover) using no repeated typefaces and no alteration of typefaces - which, in his words, “made it hard but very rewarding. It was like solving 54 micro design problems.”

I love the idea behind this design, this isn't something I can produce with my card designs, but I wanted to include this because I thought it was really clever and nicely made. Although the restrictions he focussed made it hard, I think this is something I will need to make for my designs. Restrictions would help me stay on course and not go off on a tangent. I am considering setting myself the restrictions of having to use the tiger beer colours. Although I prefer working with brighter designs, I don't think it could work for this brief. Since the card game I have decided to focus on needs to link to the beer. The colours could help make that work.

"52 cards and a box designed as Skolafelag MR’s annual dance gift. Skolafelag MR’s annual dance had a Las Vegas theme. The cards have new and unique faces starting with a new look at the hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs, all based on open books. The faces of queens and kings have some of the school staff, and the jacks have famous men that entertained in Las Vegas, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Harry Houdini and Tyson. The peoples faces on the aces are the annual dance committee, student council and their three brainiacs."

I found this card design really interesting, mainly because I can't decide if I like it. I think certain elements look really nice. But it could look a little messy the recurring diagonal line looks really nice on some of the cards but not on others. I think thats due to the amount of imagery on each changes, the higher number cards get a little messy.

"This deck of playing cards for Icelandair features Nordic gods instead of royalty."

I like the simplicity in the illustration for this design, sticking to simple vector shapes and imagery. The picture cards are really bold and strong. For the picture cards in my design. I want to try and think of something a little different, which will help link the card design to the beer, through the imagery. It could be a recurring rule I use in each of the picture/bright cards.