Nouveau Luxury Playing Cards now live on Kickstarter

[badpete69]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/641138982/nouveau-playing-cards-deck

[MrMollusk]

Worst... Ace of spades.... EVER.


I mean, really? Before you design a deck of cards, you should at least know something about cards. He got the 2 way back down, so why didn't he do anything with the AoS?

Also, it says that the first run is 2,500 decks. he has a £2,500 goal. I find it hard to believe that each deck costs only a pound to make and ship.

This project's a disaster waiting to happen.

[Don Boyer]

Seriously, Pierre, don't hold back - tell us how you REALLY feel about this deck (especially since the only words are the link)... 

OK, so what do we have?

The back looks OK.  Can't tell if it's a one-way or not.

The faces...  Wha?  Standard, except they're PIXELATED and have HORRIBLE, MISMATCHED indices.  And they have borders...  I actually don't mind the plain-as-dust Ace of Spades so much.  But not even a brand name?

Tuck Box?  Tuck Box?  Bueller?  Bueller?

They've already launched - yet they're still in the design phase.  But don't worry - "Rest assured, any ammedments will be communicated to backers immediately."  I guess that excludes changes? 

Then there's that goal.  They have to be using some dirt-cheap printer if they're getting decks made for under a pound a deck.

[badpete69]

Don....My fun is to list them good or bad and then watch the comments poor in. It is always entertaining to watch the posts on the bad decks.   Tom aka Magickfingerz always had the right words back on UC.  Always made me laugh.

[Don Boyer]

Don....My fun is to list them good or bad and then watch the comments poor in. It is always entertaining to watch the posts on the bad decks.   Tom aka Magickfingerz always had the right words back on UC.  Always made me laugh.

Maybe if you make some "ammedments" to your posts, you'll lure Tom over here to apply his apparent rapier wit!

[Leif]

Considering what we have here, the standard courts, I kinda like some of them. The best court card, as I see it, is QoH. The different indices is a rather stupid mistake, easy to fix, though. The AoS is lacking something. I'm not fond of the borders. I don't like the back, either.

Darn, I sound like a grumpy old man.

I like the dark red, and I think the QoH came out pretty good. And if the tuck box is the thing to the left in the first pic, I think I like the framelike thingy, but it's really hard to know.

There's a lot of other decks I could pay £7 for, before I consider this one.

[MrMollusk]

The AoS is lacking something.

I think you mean everything. 

But yeah. With decks like Pagan, Sherlock Holmes, and the new Mana on KS, this barely registers as a blip on my radar.

[Leif]

The AoS is lacking something.

I think you mean everything. 

But yeah. With decks like Pagan, Sherlock Holmes, and the new Mana on KS, this barely registers as a blip on my radar.

Yeah, that might be it! Hopefully he slaps some everything on that AoS, in a great looking, excellent manner, of course.

So many decks.

[Sharpie]

I really like the backs. Very holiday festive.
But I don't know how he's going to maintain that slim golden bleed evenly around the edges.

[Don Boyer]

I really like the backs. Very holiday festive.
But I don't know how he's going to maintain that slim golden bleed evenly around the edges.

I don't think he will - and he doesn't realize it.  USPC never registers the fronts perfectly with the backs - they aim for as close to perfect on the backs as they can and "good enough" on the fronts, meaning no cut-off indices and such.  The borders around the faces will be practically guaranteed to be off-center.

[GBAllison]

Nothing about this deck says Luxury, and even less (I guess that's a negative value) says Art Nouveau.

[Paul Carpenter]

I tried to get USPCC to do a thin border frame like that on the faces once. Good luck, is all I have to say...

[Paul.Middleton]

They're not USPC so we'll see about the bleed I guess.

All of our products are 100% proudly made in the United Kingdom. We have great pride in supporting our economy by using British based manufacturing, and delivering rewards with unparalleled quality to our backers. Thank you for making this happen!

It's the same company as DMC's decks (and the Grain deck on Kickstarter).

The Deck is to be printed by a UK company called Ivory who printed the decks for DMC, we have chosen this company to ensure the utmost quality in the deck.

[Robert Adams]

I think I can clear up a few things:

1. 'Our first custom limited edition deck will be limited to no more than 2500 decks. ' -this implies that if the target is just reached and no other funding is sought, then they will print fewer than 2500. If they surpass their initial target, they will cap production at 2500.

2. The printer is referred to as Paul Middleton points out. If they pay the same as DMC did then they will make very little money on this project, selling at £6.50 a deck. I believe they will pay in excess of £3.00 per deck.

3. The Cartamundi / Ivory Graphics combo makes for a decent deck. I believe that the print / cut alignment is far better than USPCC decks unless they've had Q1 casino quality control. So perhaps they will just about get away with the thin border...

That's not to say that I think the design is perfect! I've never been a fan of printing to the edge of the cards because of how small scuffs show so easily and we've yet to see how Ivory's cut handles this. There seem to be a whole bunch of design mistakes in their images on Kickstarter (also posted here). If they are design professionals it is hard to imagine that this is their finished proof but then why not wait a week to show us something better?

It is so hard to tell how serious they are about this project. The lack of add-ons, a video, better finished designs. But perhaps that is all innocent. Us Brits are less familiar with Kickstarter and are just finding our feet at quality custom card production. Where some here might be suspicious of lack of detail in the project, this may be a sign of taking caution and not being too ambitious. Perhaps they know their limits and have judged the market correctly to not have completed designs for multiple versions, extra paraphernalia etc.

But despite my defence, I agree that they need to do better to get funded. I hope they take note of what people say here and sort it out. I'd personally be happy to see more quality decks made in the UK.

 

 

[GBAllison]

Seriously, this gets worse and worse every time I look at it.  A mis-positioned Times Roman font for the number cards?  And Courier New for the courts?  I can't imagine they did this on purpose.  Maybe they did this on a Mac, then moved it over to a PC to take the screen shots, and didn't notice that the Apple fonts didn't come over.

That's the type of attention to detail that ... never mind.  I was just *so* looking forward to something inspired by Art Nouveau instead of Zombies.

[NDL]

Hi guys thanks for all the feedback, we have taken what you have said into very seriously and looked again at the design of the cards to answer your concerns, we have only made educational cards in the past but love playing poker which is why we thought we would design our own cards. 

The font issue was caused from transfer from Mac to PC - we should have noticed its been rectified, the indices are intentionally off centre from the suit but please provide feedback and we will change based upon your opinions.
The border - we spoke to the manufacturer about the border and we were assured it wouldn't be a problem but taking your feedback into consideration we have removed it.
We have added the joker and Ace cards inspired by our theme.

Please have another look and let us know what you think, we really appreciated the feedback and really want to produce the best card possible, so we will take it all on board.

Thanks!

[Don Boyer]

Hi guys thanks for all the feedback, we have taken what you have said into very seriously and looked again at the design of the cards to answer your concerns, we have only made educational cards in the past but love playing poker which is why we thought we would design our own cards. 

The font issue was caused from transfer from Mac to PC - we should have noticed its been rectified, the indices are intentionally off centre from the suit but please provide feedback and we will change based upon your opinions.
The border - we spoke to the manufacturer about the border and we were assured it wouldn't be a problem but taking your feedback into consideration we have removed it.
We have added the joker and Ace cards inspired by our theme.

Please have another look and let us know what you think, we really appreciated the feedback and really want to produce the best card possible, so we will take it all on board.

Thanks!

Welcome to the Discourse.  You should make and "Introduce Yourself" topic and let the gang get to know you better.

Indices should not be intentionally off-center.  The best indices have the value centered above the suit pip and should be of a uniform width.  Indices need to be uniform for fast, easy reading without any confusion.  The indices for the court cards - consider making "cut-outs" in that background pattern so the indices are set against the plain background of the paper rather than the patterned background.  Again, it's for ease of reading.

[MrMollusk]

Welcome.

The custom aces are a huge help, but the detail you've added around the court cards makes them too busy and cluttered. In addition, the indices are a bit close to the pips on the number cards. Some are almost touching. Moving the indices away from the pips or reducing the pip's size would help greatly.

Also, what would the size of the print run be if you did reach your goal?

Glad you're willing to take criticism and join a discussion. I love it when designers are open-minded and reasonable.

[Don Boyer]

Welcome.

The custom aces are a huge help, but the detail you've added around the court cards makes them too busy and cluttered. In addition, the indices are a bit close to the pips on the number cards. Some are almost touching. Moving the indices away from the pips or reducing the pip's size would help greatly.

Also, what would the size of the print run be if you did reach your goal?

Glad you're willing to take criticism and join a discussion. I love it when designers are open-minded and reasonable.

As I sit here thinking about it, having all the detail and size that the courts presently have is not a good idea, in terms of all that extra background.  When your court images including surroundings are that large, there's a chance that a quick accidental flash at the card table would reveal that you're holding a court card, in much the same way that rotating an upside-down court did back in the early, pre-index days of playing cards when cards were still single-headed images shown full-body.  I'd shrink the width of those images just enough to put the indices all alone in the white space around the court characters.

[NDL]

Thanks, that is a really good point, we have re-sized the court cards taking this into consideration and moved the indices from sitting upon the pattern to make it easier to read.

The size of the print run will be dependent upon how many decks we were to sell but would will not print more than 2500.

Any other feedback would be greatly appreciated. Especially with regards the tuck box - we were thinking that the box would look better if we made it more in-keeping with the pattern used on the backs of the cards and the aces?  Let us know what you think!

[Robert Adams]

I personally like it when the tuck box doesn't have the back design pasted on one side. This always seemed like a clumsy and lazy functional design decision to me.

I think you should keep the box plain and slick both sides. I suppose the design has to have some consistency with the deck but I like the contrast with the detail on the backs of the cards.

-But that's just me.

[GBAllison]

For those of you who haven't been following the thread ... the initial images posted on Kickstarter have since been modified.  So when someone wrote "worst Ace of Spades ever" ... and I talked about the Times Roman and Courier New fonts ... those were based on the original images.

Here are some new images:

[MagikFingerz]

I hear someone missed me 

Those court card sizes needs to be standardized, seeing the Queen and King of Diamonds next to each other doesn't look good when the size of the court art is so different. I would also advise moving the indices closer to the edge (on all cards), which in turn would allow for larger court cards.

Regarding the box I don't mind having the back design on the back, as that just means you can see the back design without having to open the deck (good for those of us with crappy memory). If that is kept though, I would prefer it to cover the entire back of the box. A scaled version just reminds me of the standard Bee box, and probably a few others as well.

[badpete69]

Well look who the cat dragged in

[Leif]

I'm beginning to warm up to that back, maybe it isn't so bad after all.

About the indices: I agree that they might benefit from an outward move. I would aim for about halfway between the edge and the courts frame. I also agree that the space between the pip and the number/letter is a little bit on the small side.

The font looks good, although that Q might be hard to get in the right place, I tried a similar font with my (unreleased) deck, and could never get it right where I wanted. I didn't want that long protruding thingy to touch the frame of the court. I think the difference in width between the J and the Q made it difficult to get right, for me.

About the box: I'm no Art Nouveau expert, and you might not even have aimed for that period with this deck, but when I look at "art nouveau" images they often look overly decorated. I think I like your box, but judging from what I've seen It doesn't seem to be very "Art Nouveau".

About the AoS: It now looks much better, but it still needs something more, that extra pizazz, to really make it shine.

I would like if the courts could have the larger pips inside the frames, as the classic bicycle deck. I think it would add just the right amount of color.

I think that adding the pattern from the back was a rather nice touch, but it made the hearts and diamond courts kind if blend in with the pattern too much, maybe look into that.

good luck and keep up the good work.