That's very true. Times have changed though and I'm just thinking about what everyone would be most receptive to nowadays. If i went for brown and green it would be a 100% everything custom deck. I like the idea of a brown back though, with all of the wood and curving angles. Would be nice to have a matching colored pips on the flipside.
Matching green and brown pips should be simple enough - you're already creating some degree of customization in the faces, so why not?
What people are most receptive to are two things: either a big name (D&D could make a deck on toilet paper, call it S&M v7, and it would sell out) or a strong, solid artistic vision. The best-remembered decks are the ones that truly are works of art, fully custom and pushing the boundaries of what a deck can look like - and not just for the sake of pushing boundaries, either.
That's a great idea! The back design could be a closeup of wood grain or tree bark, and the grain and knots could be built up as intricate shapes or patterns. Maybe the wood grain could wrap around the shape of the main Cardistree tree and the Cardistree tree itself could look like it's carved or burned into the wood surface.
That's a sweet idea. I wouldn't make it extremely obvious, but burn in the pattern, king of like how the split spades are, but it wool fade and intermingle with the wood. I'm getting excited about this deck! Gotta get with my sister soon and knock out some design work.
Burned, carved, or just plain naturally-occurring - you have options.
Here's an idea I like: create a "winter" and "summer" version of the deck. The summer version would be a bird's eye view of a forest, with treetops appearing as small dots in clusters, a few open fields here and there - a completely symmetrical pattern allowing for a two-way back. Then the winter version would be the same exact scene in winter; bare deciduous trees, just like on the card faces, fields covered in snow, perhaps some animal footprints visible. You could conceivably do spring and fall versions as well, if you prefer the color scheme better - and that would also work nicely, since the faces are "winter" themselves! The backs would be before and after!