New KS Deck: Bicycle Minimal Deck

[MrMollusk]

GENTLEMEN

I bring you:

THE EPITOME OF LAZY DECK DESIGN

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/avren/minimal-deck-new-bicycle-playing-cards







If  your deck needs a freakin' KEY to even be used normally, you know you've done something wrong.

[kdklown]

Yeah, seems like a homework assignment.  If I wanted to learn how to use a deck of cards anew I'd just get that Scopa deck!   

[Don Boyer]

This is just a bad, bad design.  I need a key to read the indices AND I need to see the whole face to read the suits?  Despite an attempt at a modern look, this actually sets card design back nearly 150 years!

Bad design.  Bad.  Oh, so bad.

[Rob Wright]

New deck idea- 0101010001101000011001010111001101100101001000000100001101100001011100100110010001110011001000000101001101110101011000110110101100100001

[The Quadfather]

New deck idea- 0101010001101000011001010111001101100101001000000100001101100001011100100110010001110011001000000101001101110101011000110110101100100001

I prefer this.

[Magic_Orthodoxy]

too minimal for my taste 

oh wait, that's the point?

Yea, I stand by it

[Card Player]

I like minimalist playing cards. What I don't like is when people use minimalism branding as the reason or purpose to give less. Don't brand this as minimalistic and what do we really have here?

I think I'm going to create my own art movement and call it "crapism" or being a "crapistic" artist. This way even bad or lazy art has it's place to be admired. Now we are all designers!

[Curt]

I tend to be a sucker for minimalist type design, not just in playing cards, but this isn't done very well. The pips are awful and completely useless.

[Don Boyer]

I tend to be a sucker for minimalist type design, not just in playing cards, but this isn't done very well. The pips are awful and completely useless.

Minimalism at its best retains its function.  He over-minimized his design, losing functionality, especially in the indices - who wants to interpret indices only to still have to see the card face as well?  The worst part is that he's sticking to it.

Check out this exchange we had on KS - I'm in red, he's in blue:

I was checking out your deck design - I understand you were aiming for minimalism, but you may have gone too far.

For a modern deck to be useful, you need to be able to read both the value and the suit quickly and easily from the index corner. Putting aside the fact that you actually require a key to decode your card values, you have no indicators of suit in the indices. Thus, a player using these cards is forced to see the entire face design just to know precisely what cards he or she is holding - that makes for a very difficult-to-use deck of cards.

Consider alterations to the design to include the suits in the corner as well as the values.

This is my first deck, and my goal was to go far with minimalism. I appreciate your feedback. I know it won't be loved by everyone and will take some adapting. I will definitely keep your criticism in mind for future projects. Thank you for the message.
Josh

Consider stopping by my forum, playingcardforum.com - I don't own it but I am co-administrator with the man who does. We have many card designers among the membership with a good amount of experience to tap into. We can be a bit harsh when criticizing a design, but it's never meant personally and it stems from our love of the hobby.

Thank you. I will definitely check it out.

Hopefully he will stop by.  I really think he's got a good basic idea, just not well executed.

[Curt]

Good to hear that he might drop in and read some critiques. I 100% agree that the indices should be looked at first, it would take a while to to used to his system for suits... and would be completely impractical for a magician since the audience would not be able to understand what card they had just chosen.

[Alex Willis]

I used to have a morse code deck in the Army that was similar to this.  It used circles and dashes.  It was hell playing spades when you had  the --.- ..- . . -. / --- ..-. / ... .--. .- -.. . ...

[Don Boyer]

I used to have a morse code deck in the Army that was similar to this.  It used circles and dashes.  It was hell playing spades when you had  the --.- ..- . . -. / --- ..-. / ... .--. .- -.. . ...

That deck still has a leg up on this one - you had to learn Morse code, but at least that had uses beyond the one deck design!