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Hi all. I just launched the Kickstarter for my deck Modern Day Myth: Spirits yesterday morning. I'm an artist and illustrator by profession. I've been bouncing this deck idea around in my head for about 2 years now. I even posted the first iteration in the forums here. Scrapped all of it and restarted and this is the result. They will be printed by MPC as this is such a short run under KS's Make/100 initiative. I'm open to suggestions though. This is both my first deck and Kickstarter! I'd love to hear what you all think!

Concept: Modern Day Myth combines Greek myth with modern identities. I previously explored using the main Olympians, but switched to illustrating the ancient Greeks' personified concepts (or spirits) of abstract aspects of life such as sleep, grief, poverty, courage, etc. and re-imagining them as present day people!

4-color suits and an asymmetrical back design make this an easy pass.

Is it just me, or is the compressed court indexes look a bit wonky?

Lindsey,

Four-color suits and one-way backs are a tough sell for this crowd, but I'm always happy to see new, talented designers wade into the fray and try to show us something new, so thank you

I have a few suggestions, both on the deck itself and on how the campaign presents it. First, I think you probably do need to lose the spots of CMYK color in the corners of the back design. Having a different color in each corner makes it feel unbalanced. It might be better to select just one accent color (maybe the blue, since it sort of suggests your theme - social media is like a modern-day Greek chorus, and most of the big ones have blue for their theme color - but this is just spitballing on my part).

Second, the pips: I understand the choice of hues, given what you're trying to evoke, but rather than these flat-color designs I liked the bicolor pips on the two cards on your Behance. They seemed to have more depth and created a little more visual interest, without being busy.

Third, those two courts on your Behance aren't actually shown on the Kickstarter page itself. I think there was some discussion on the deck drafting board that you would be reworking one or two of them - the images are broken so I can't be sure which ones - but there are only four courts shown on the campaign page. Typically backers in custom deck campaigns are looking to see a full complement of court designs before pledging. Are some of the courts for this deck still in process? If not, you might consider adding pictures of those as well.

Best of luck to you! May the Kickstarter algorithms be ever in your favor

Merlebird wrote:Lindsey,

Four-color suits and one-way backs are a tough sell for this crowd, but I'm always happy to see new, talented designers wade into the fray and try to show us something new, so thank you

I have a few suggestions, both on the deck itself and on how the campaign presents it. First, I think you probably do need to lose the spots of CMYK color in the corners of the back design. Having a different color in each corner makes it feel unbalanced. It might be better to select just one accent color (maybe the blue, since it sort of suggests your theme - social media is like a modern-day Greek chorus, and most of the big ones have blue for their theme color - but this is just spitballing on my part).

Second, the pips: I understand the choice of hues, given what you're trying to evoke, but rather than these flat-color designs I liked the bicolor pips on the two cards on your Behance. They seemed to have more depth and created a little more visual interest, without being busy.

Third, those two courts on your Behance aren't actually shown on the Kickstarter page itself. I think there was some discussion on the deck drafting board that you would be reworking one or two of them - the images are broken so I can't be sure which ones - but there are only four courts shown on the campaign page. Typically backers in custom deck campaigns are looking to see a full complement of court designs before pledging. Are some of the courts for this deck still in process? If not, you might consider adding pictures of those as well.

Best of luck to you! May the Kickstarter algorithms be ever in your favor

Thanks for the detailed reply! This is really helpful.

I think I will go with your suggestions for the back and pips. The pips are bicolor now, but more subtle than previously. I need to up that contrast.

And I completely scrapped the former cards from Behance. They were too...painterly? They looked muddy at print size. So I started fresh and ditched them. I do still have other courts to do. They're all sketched up and ready for color, but I was unsure about the CMYK color way, and I think this thread shows that it's too ambitious for a deck.

Decknowledgy wrote:Is it just me, or is the compressed court indexes look a bit wonky?

I think you're right! Second set of eyes.

lindseyswop wrote:

Decknowledgy wrote:Is it just me, or is the compressed court indexes look a bit wonky?

I think you're right! Second set of eyes.

I actually kind of like them? The main issue might be the very truncated curve of the J. It reduces readability and makes the index feel small and out of place next to the much broader K and Q. I do like that wider-than-tall aspect of the current ones; I think it gives it a more "modern" vibe. But if you ask ten of us you'll probably get twelve different opinions, so, grain of salt and all that.

lindseyswop wrote:The pips are bicolor now, but more subtle than previously. I need to up that contrast.

I'll be damned, so they are. I'm on my phone and I had to zoom in quite a bit to see it. Yes, a higher contrast between the two colors would probably be safer. If the more subtle contrast survived the printing process I bet it'd look fantastic, but that could be a big if. One of the many deck designers who loiter around here should be able to tell you how well those finer color contrasts hold up once printed at small scale.

There have been painterly decks, and decks with CMYK color schemes, but none thus far that have successfully married them, at least so far as I'm aware. You're right that the combination might be too dissonant at poker size. But I would be doing you a disservice if I let you come away thinking collectors want less ambitious designs; we definitely reserve the most vitriol for the too-safe, done-to-death stuff. Keep experimenting! The worst thing art can be is boring.

Sorry to ramble on at you. If you've read all this and found any of it even a little helpful, I'm grateful.

I love it when designers take the comments here for the constructive criticism they are intended to be.

Lindsey, my proverbial hat is off to you. All we want is one more deck of awesome cards, and it seems like all you want to do is create such a deck.

This is awesome.

rousselle wrote:I love it when designers take the comments here for the constructive criticism they are intended to be.

Lindsey, my proverbial hat is off to you. All we want is one more deck of awesome cards, and it seems like all you want to do is create such a deck.

This is awesome.

rousselle wrote:Lindsey, my proverbial hat is off to you.

Allan is not allowed to have literal hats anymore. The country still hasn't healed from the Propeller Beanie Incident of 2009. Never forget.

I've stalked the forums a bit, and I know you all give good advice! I've been applying changes and really taking it to heart. Thank you!

I like these a lot! I think you might want to both lengthen and narrow the back design in order to make the border the same size all the way around. You're also likely going to have trouble on KS using MPC as a printer

hsbc wrote:I like these a lot! I think you might want to both lengthen and narrow the back design in order to make the border the same size all the way around. You're also likely going to have trouble on KS using MPC as a printer

Do you have a recommendation for a printer that will do this short of a run? Thank you!

lindseyswop wrote:

hsbc wrote:I like these a lot! I think you might want to both lengthen and narrow the back design in order to make the border the same size all the way around. You're also likely going to have trouble on KS using MPC as a printer

Do you have a recommendation for a printer that will do this short of a run? Thank you!

You might want to check with Expert Playing Card Company (EPCC). Their printer in China can do 500 print run which is their minimum.

http://expertplayingcard.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ask Jackson Robinson. I believe he's been using a company called... Shuffled Ink? The results have been pretty decent.

Also, if you *do* use MPC, they have a new linen finish that they used for their recent Chao decks that would be preferable to any other finish that MPC offers. I'm sure it's more expensive than their smooth finish, but truly, their smooth finish is terrible. If you are able to use that, I'll back your project. If you're able to use whatever linen finish JR has been using from Shuffled Ink, I'll back your project.

Thank you both! Requesting a quote from Shuffled Ink now. Either way I’m definitely upgrading to the linen stock.

I know I'm a bit late to the party but I'm super enthused to see you so engaging with the community to seek out feedback as you continue with the design process - that's awesome!

One thing I thought might be worth considering is the background colors of the suits on the court cards.

What I mean exactly is that as you've probably already noticed in standard deck design, the hearts & diamonds share red and the clubs & spades share black. And, even though this is obviously not by any means a standard deck as you're using 4 different colors for the suits anyways - which, btw, is totally fine and doesn't bother me - the background of the court colors are kinda throwing me off because, as it's seen right now, you have the clubs & diamonds paired together with the shared dark gray background and the spades & hearts with the off-white background which adds just another point of confusion to my eye along with the 4 suit colors.

just something I noticed and maybe worth taking a look at. It's an easy enough fix - just swap the background colors of either the clubs & hearts or spades & diamonds and you'll be good.

I hope this helps and good luck!