Question About Text Placement

acaciadraws

Hey all,

My name's Acacia and I'm currently an art student working on my senior thesis project. I'm finally making my own tarot deck! But my thesis advisor brought up a good point: does the place of the text on the card matter?

I've always seen the card name on the bottom in a banner separate from the image. Is sticking to this important at all? I've tried googling to the best of my ability and while I have multiple books about Tarot, none of them are really about the process behind making a deck. I figured all you great folks might be able to offer some insight.

Thanks!
 

tarotbear

You might check some of the threads in the Deck Creation forum and see pictures of decks people are developing. There is also a thread there about 'I wish I had known before I started this deck that ...'

Does the placing of the text matter? 99% of the time it is at the bottom and outside the frame/borders of the image. The text/name of card realistically is unimportant in the scheme of things, and many people will tell you that they wished certain decks did NOT have text (or numbers) AT ALL since many times the text competes with the image and you are there to read the cards, not the text (or the copyright and company as a few decks have).

People also detest a text in multiple languages taking up space on the card - once again - how much space are you going to waste with a text in 4-6 languages when it doesn't really need to be there to begin with?

The other consideration is borders- many decks have borders that make the image smaller - ditch the wide fancy-schmancy border and give us more image to look at. Some people just hate the white border and wish the images went all the way to the cut lines, like the images in the Morgan-Greer do.

Does the title HAVE to be in a border or a little banner? No.
 

reall

in my personal experience I think it depends on your audience?
i.e professionals prefer no text no borders!
and beginners text!
if you had to have text then its usual/best to place it on bottom,
(for example see most popular decks!^^;)))))
 

gregory

I think the text needs to be placed - where it looks best on that particular deck. What a revolutionary thought... :D

I don't think banners are necessary, though some are attractive, and I hate hate hate extra text

"Fool".

Fine.

"Fool. Learn to pay attention to where you're going before it's too late."

NO NO please no. (with apologies to Thirteen - I used a bit of her meaning and I am FINE with the meaning side, it's putting it on the card I object to. You can MISS stuff on the actual card if you read text like that on there.)
 

tarotbear

In my personal experience I think it depends on your audience? i.e professionals prefer no text no borders! and beginners text!

IMHO - decks with illustrated Pip cards - here is a card with 3 Swords stabbed through a heart - What suit IS this one? (LOL!) ... and does it REALLY need to have a large Roman numeral "III" at the top? Isn't the name of that card obvious?

Yes - you may get the Emperor and the King of Pentacles confused on a quick visual - but the Emperor doesn't have Pentacles in his design.
 

donnalee

You might check some of the threads in the Deck Creation forum and see pictures of decks people are developing. There is also a thread there about 'I wish I had known before I started this deck that ...'

Does the placing of the text matter? 99% of the time it is at the bottom and outside the frame/borders of the image. The text/name of card realistically is unimportant in the scheme of things, and many people will tell you that they wished certain decks did NOT have text (or numbers) AT ALL since many times the text competes with the image and you are there to read the cards, not the text (or the copyright and company as a few decks have).

People also detest a text in multiple languages taking up space on the card - once again - how much space are you going to waste with a text in 4-6 languages when it doesn't really need to be there to begin with?
...

Does the title HAVE to be in a border or a little banner? No.

I have rejected buying decks, especially minis, that have text in mutliple languages on something smaller than the amount of chcolate the average American person might eat in a day--I just dislike them and find them useless. I don't mind the III or 9 or whatever small detail there might be at bottom or top depending on the deck, but I completely reject anything with interpretation on it, as mentioned by someone else here. It limits things way too much for me personally to have any interpretation at all written on a card, and makes the deck unusable for me for public readings. I don't mean to bash the RJ Stewart Merlin, but a few of the cards which say things like "Disappointment" and "Disaster" right on them render them useless to me for working with others, especially when the book with it does not even echo that exact term in interpretation hints. You are getting more opinion than you ever asked for maybe--I hope everything we are saying is some help to you and not just way more than you ever need to read! Good luck with your project.
 

Melia

Hey all,

My name's Acacia and I'm currently an art student working on my senior thesis project. I'm finally making my own tarot deck! But my thesis advisor brought up a good point: does the place of the text on the card matter?

I've always seen the card name on the bottom in a banner separate from the image. Is sticking to this important at all? I've tried googling to the best of my ability and while I have multiple books about Tarot, none of them are really about the process behind making a deck. I figured all you great folks might be able to offer some insight.

Thanks!

I suspect that many tarot decks have titles on the bottom because, when applied to many things, 'the bottom' is generally considered less significant than 'the top'. The images are what people are reading and the titles should always be a secondary feature. (Is this why we see banners running across the bottom of a t.v. screen rather than at the top)? However, what gregory has said is valid - the placement of the title banner really would depend on a particular deck's artwork and how you wish to present it. I also think having title placement uniform across the whole deck is best, so the reader doesn't have to adjust their line of vision as they are pulling cards for a reading.
 

Zedrex

I'm putting the text at the bottom of the cards I'm designing, but it's not because I think the titles and text are 'lower' or less worthy... rather, because that's the pragmatically best placement for them, in terms of composition and not making the cards hard to read. Text at the top can make the images hard to interpret for me.

Personally, I don't have any rules, though. I'd love to do a deck that looks all like movie posters, and have the text look like poster text, which is usually intended for impact and to work with the structure of the image at hand
 

tarotbear

But a movie poster is there to sell the movie - you don't use the poster to try to decipher any meaning. Sometimes movie posters are so minimalist they tell you absolutely NOTHING about the movie itself.