This is an overview of my work in Design Communication II for Digital Media Design, at Texas State Technical College.
I began my work by refrencing hisotrical tarot cards to create a visual refrence. From anicent 9th century China across the world playing cards have taken many shapes travelling through Persia and Egypt until reaching Europe around the late 14th century. In the high middle ages the cards spilt into two main types, Tarot and what we currently think of as playing cards.
Tarot cards have a dense and layered language built up their users which connects each one of a kind card to the hundreds of years of esoteric meaning. I used the Rider–Waite tarot deck from 1909, one of the most recognizeable decks as a refrence for my work.
I settled upon using abstract designs for the 10th card in each suit and a wheel of fortune for the back of the card.
The second touch stone was playing cards, which have had many diffrent forms and tradations specific to each region. The "standard" deck is the French set but there were versions in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, and Spain. I created a pastiche of various regional decks for the suits using Cups, Coins, Acrons, and Swords.
I used other tradations such as specical ace and deuces cards, a page instead of jack.
I also used the designs of clowns from the Italian Commedia dell'arte for the jokers. Namely Harlequin and Pagliacci (who is technically an Fan OC from a opera about the Commedia Dell'arte)
My next job was realizing the cards and taking them from these sketches into a digital file I could work with. In Illustrator I turned the cards into proper files and fleshed them all out with full color.
Here are some of my favorites.
Finally with the designs rendered in full the final step was to craft some mock ups to present my work
