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Playing Card Chat ♠ ♥ ♣ ♦ => Design & Development => Topic started by: munik on September 15, 2017, 11:47:06 AM

Title: [Deck in development] Playing cards + Tarot
Post by: munik on September 15, 2017, 11:47:06 AM

Hello everybody!

I'm a graphic designer and as a personal project I'm trying to develop a tarot/playing card deck, I have the idea to unite the Rider Waite tarot deck (which is the most common tarot deck) and the standard French playing cards, since they have a shared history somewhere down the line it seemed to me like an interesting idea.

I want to make the deck as approachable and basic as possible, my goal is to take the Rider Waite illustrations and bring them way down to their basic meaning, while keeping in mind the original illustrations. Right now I used the original Rider Waite illustrations just to sketch and get an idea of how to interpret the tarot suits to the French playing card suits, but eventually I will make custom illustrations. (See the attached image.)

I would like your honest opinion about the project, the idea is still very much in development.
I'm not sure if this project interests you guys but I thought there's no harm in trying and see what you have to say!

I'm very much a newbie to designing playing cards, so I'm very open to any suggestions and critique. :)

(https://image.ibb.co/kEYTyk/overview.jpg)

Title: Re: [Deck in development] Playing cards + Tarot
Post by: Worst Bower on September 16, 2017, 06:03:41 AM

RW is under copyright protection in some countries. I'm not sure about how safe it is to use adapted imagery from that deck. You may need permission from some companies or estates if you want to sell it in say the UK. It is probably safer to use a more traditional deck like Marseilles or any of the old Italian ones.

Title: Re: [Deck in development] Playing cards + Tarot
Post by: Don Boyer on September 17, 2017, 09:14:35 AM

Quote from: Worst Bower on September 16, 2017, 06:03:41 AM

RW is under copyright protection in some countries. I'm not sure about how safe it is to use adapted imagery from that deck. You may need permission from some companies or estates if you want to sell it in say the UK. It is probably safer to use a more traditional deck like Marseilles or any of the old Italian ones.

For international sale, you may be correct, but if he stayed within the US, there's no issue.  Anything that was copyrighted prior to 1923 is now in the public domain in the US.  Rider-Waite was created in 1910.

Of course, one could try for simpler, more iconic imagery, much like how the current standard pips are stripped down to basic images.