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{So here's some of the highlights from my production and design notebook for my gaming-oriented tarot deck. They might be useful to others...}
The core production concepts for Anaithnid Games is to have as ecologically-sound a basis for physical game materials as possible while still creating quality products (part of the mission statement is to only produce games I'd buy in a store from complete strangers). Print-on-Demand can be useful in achieving this (print only what is sold, minimize waste and warehousing, recycled content in the materials as well as recyclable products), yet the quality of printing, paper and packaging can be a concern.
To make sure that the product was of as high a quality as possible, I shopped for a vendor first and established a relationship with them so that any questions or concerns would be handled in an efficient and mutually beneficial manner. I was sent paper and print calibration samples from a number of vendors and eventually settled on using The Game Crafter as printer and fulfillment center - it combined the majority of the services and products I wanted in a convenient framework. They were not the most reasonable choice from a revenue-driven viewpoint - the margin on products through them is not the most lucrative for the artists - yet they were very easy to work with for cross-promotion and marketing. So I went with them.
The deck was designed for playing cards with - one of the creative story-games that I'm hoping to release next year uses tarot as a resolution mechanic. It was also intended for use with traditional tarot games. I also read tarot, so having something that could be read with as a secondary purpose could be useful as well. As such, it fits the general design of playing cards - the card numbers are in opposing corners and can be clearly read even if the card is reversed. The central pips are simply numbers rather than symbols in a gridded pattern - a reverse can be read easily this way. I also chose to color-code the suits and Trumps to make following suit and using elemental patterns in a reading easier.
The titles of the Trumps were a source of some debate: I wanted the deck to be accessible to almost any person of any belief system, yet still follow some traditions of the cards in a respectful manner. I chose to use the Thoth ordering of the cards with some revised titles. The High Priestess and The Hierophant are made a bit more generic: The Priestess and The Priest. The Lovers becomes the Lover, in a nod to some of the older deck imagery of a young male making a choice between two females. Lust is The Force - another meaning of Strength, but also a small pun on Sforza and their contributions to tarot. Justice is The Balance. Death, Temperance, and The Devil are renamed The Mystery, The Great Work and The Tempter. Just about every other card keeps the name from the Thoth deck.
Print-on-demand is a technology that's very similar to a laser printer. As such, it has some of the same problems as a laser printer. Large flat areas of solid color tend to mottle and become uneven in density. Artwork that's too small will be blurry when reproduced and sometimes even art of the exact size will have problems if not well-constructed. So I chose designs that would be clear and relatively plain but not too large in proportion and have significant crossover between color separations while still looking nice and have a good contrast. I wanted to use the color scheme from the Enochian "vision of the watchtowers" from Dee & Kelley's workings, so I set up a green, red, light grey and blue-black to use for the suited pips. I chose a nice bright golden yellow for the Trumps.
The main pip artwork is simply the number in the suit's color. The courts are somewhat abstract chess icons - King and Queen are King and Queen, while Knights/Princes are Knights. Princesses/Pages are Pawns. This sets up an interesting dichotomy for reading courts: K&Q are clearly personal while N&P are more abstract and functional. Kind of fun to use that separation in a reading. The Trumps are simply the number of the card with the title below it in that golden-yellow color. The background artwork is a Creative Commons licensed photo from NASA that has a dark enough quality that the colors pop the way I'd like yet isn't flat. I especially like the idea of using stars with something based loosely on Crowley's works.
The typeface I chose for all of the deck's numbers and labels was Lobster 1.4, a typeface with an open design license that I felt was warm and casual yet clearly readable when playing games. I sized the fonts to be right at the edge of the mottling issue.
To produce the actual artwork for the cards, I needed to turn my vector files into PNGs. This was relatively easy to do in Inkscape - I just set up a small script to render the files to PNG at the correct size and resolution. I produced the initial PNGs as twice the final size - 5x7 and then reduced them to fit the final 2.5x3.5 with bleed. In the process, the artwork became a bit more crisp in the resized PNGs.
The finished product: I'm happy with how the cards look and feel. I like the clay coated stock more than some of the plastic coated cards I've worked with. The smaller size makes having large hands (some variants on tarock use 19 cards in a player's hand) a bit easier to work with. The trim sizes are a bit off, but within the limits specified by TGC (however, 1/8" is a pretty big tolerance). I definitely do not like that any deck is packaged in a very large cardboard flip box - it's wasteful and bulky. I also do not enjoy how the cards were ordered in the shrink wrap they were sent in - I'd specified a pretty particular ordering. I'm also not a fan of their shipping costs...
Those concerns aside, I'd use them again to produce another deck any time.
Eoin Keith Boyle
Anaithnid Games
The core production concepts for Anaithnid Games is to have as ecologically-sound a basis for physical game materials as possible while still creating quality products (part of the mission statement is to only produce games I'd buy in a store from complete strangers). Print-on-Demand can be useful in achieving this (print only what is sold, minimize waste and warehousing, recycled content in the materials as well as recyclable products), yet the quality of printing, paper and packaging can be a concern.
To make sure that the product was of as high a quality as possible, I shopped for a vendor first and established a relationship with them so that any questions or concerns would be handled in an efficient and mutually beneficial manner. I was sent paper and print calibration samples from a number of vendors and eventually settled on using The Game Crafter as printer and fulfillment center - it combined the majority of the services and products I wanted in a convenient framework. They were not the most reasonable choice from a revenue-driven viewpoint - the margin on products through them is not the most lucrative for the artists - yet they were very easy to work with for cross-promotion and marketing. So I went with them.
The deck was designed for playing cards with - one of the creative story-games that I'm hoping to release next year uses tarot as a resolution mechanic. It was also intended for use with traditional tarot games. I also read tarot, so having something that could be read with as a secondary purpose could be useful as well. As such, it fits the general design of playing cards - the card numbers are in opposing corners and can be clearly read even if the card is reversed. The central pips are simply numbers rather than symbols in a gridded pattern - a reverse can be read easily this way. I also chose to color-code the suits and Trumps to make following suit and using elemental patterns in a reading easier.
The titles of the Trumps were a source of some debate: I wanted the deck to be accessible to almost any person of any belief system, yet still follow some traditions of the cards in a respectful manner. I chose to use the Thoth ordering of the cards with some revised titles. The High Priestess and The Hierophant are made a bit more generic: The Priestess and The Priest. The Lovers becomes the Lover, in a nod to some of the older deck imagery of a young male making a choice between two females. Lust is The Force - another meaning of Strength, but also a small pun on Sforza and their contributions to tarot. Justice is The Balance. Death, Temperance, and The Devil are renamed The Mystery, The Great Work and The Tempter. Just about every other card keeps the name from the Thoth deck.
Print-on-demand is a technology that's very similar to a laser printer. As such, it has some of the same problems as a laser printer. Large flat areas of solid color tend to mottle and become uneven in density. Artwork that's too small will be blurry when reproduced and sometimes even art of the exact size will have problems if not well-constructed. So I chose designs that would be clear and relatively plain but not too large in proportion and have significant crossover between color separations while still looking nice and have a good contrast. I wanted to use the color scheme from the Enochian "vision of the watchtowers" from Dee & Kelley's workings, so I set up a green, red, light grey and blue-black to use for the suited pips. I chose a nice bright golden yellow for the Trumps.
The main pip artwork is simply the number in the suit's color. The courts are somewhat abstract chess icons - King and Queen are King and Queen, while Knights/Princes are Knights. Princesses/Pages are Pawns. This sets up an interesting dichotomy for reading courts: K&Q are clearly personal while N&P are more abstract and functional. Kind of fun to use that separation in a reading. The Trumps are simply the number of the card with the title below it in that golden-yellow color. The background artwork is a Creative Commons licensed photo from NASA that has a dark enough quality that the colors pop the way I'd like yet isn't flat. I especially like the idea of using stars with something based loosely on Crowley's works.
The typeface I chose for all of the deck's numbers and labels was Lobster 1.4, a typeface with an open design license that I felt was warm and casual yet clearly readable when playing games. I sized the fonts to be right at the edge of the mottling issue.
To produce the actual artwork for the cards, I needed to turn my vector files into PNGs. This was relatively easy to do in Inkscape - I just set up a small script to render the files to PNG at the correct size and resolution. I produced the initial PNGs as twice the final size - 5x7 and then reduced them to fit the final 2.5x3.5 with bleed. In the process, the artwork became a bit more crisp in the resized PNGs.
The finished product: I'm happy with how the cards look and feel. I like the clay coated stock more than some of the plastic coated cards I've worked with. The smaller size makes having large hands (some variants on tarock use 19 cards in a player's hand) a bit easier to work with. The trim sizes are a bit off, but within the limits specified by TGC (however, 1/8" is a pretty big tolerance). I definitely do not like that any deck is packaged in a very large cardboard flip box - it's wasteful and bulky. I also do not enjoy how the cards were ordered in the shrink wrap they were sent in - I'd specified a pretty particular ordering. I'm also not a fan of their shipping costs...
Those concerns aside, I'd use them again to produce another deck any time.
Eoin Keith Boyle
Anaithnid Games
