lskingofcards

[lskingofcards]

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Final Cards:

Above this post, you can see all of the final designs for my cards, as well as how I presented them.

The first four pictures show the final card designs, including the joker designs. You can see how the different styles look as a full suit. Creating the suits was as easy as duplicating the pips and placing them in the correct place for each number. The pictures show off each design, and how they look for each card, and I think they were well executed.

Not only that, but the mockups show that despite there being four different styles, the cards work together really well due to the colours and packaging, which is What I wanted to achieve. I wanted both a sense of cohesion and separation in one, and I think everything tied together very nicely.

As you can see I kept the packaging and reverse cards fairly simple, so as to not confuse the designs at all.

Overall, really like how the deck turned out, and I think it is a very effective showcase of design.

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These pictures show the process, and final designs for the box and the reverse of the cards.

After some brainstorming, I decided on the name “4our”. I went through a lot of different ideas, such as “quad” and “convolute”, but none of these names really resonated with me. I cam to the conclusion that I needed something simple and effective, something that would really show what the deck was about. I decided on “4our” because my entire deck is based around the idea of the number 4: 4 suits, 4 styles, 4 worlds.

I played around with the idea of showing the pips on the deck box, as seen in the sketch, but I decided that it would be better to let the customer figure out the name for themselves, rather than explicitly telling the customer what the deck was, so in my final designs I removed the pips.

As you can see, the design for the reverse also changed. I kept the idea of a repeating patter, but chose to repeat the number 4 in alternating colours, instead of the pips. I feel like once again the pips were too explicit, but not only that it made the backs look messy and a bit all over the place, so once again I chose simplicity.

All that was left by now was finishing the cards and presenting them.

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final Card designs:

These are the final four design styles I chose to use in my deck. I chose to fairly geometric and abstract designs, and two slightly more illustrative styles. As you can see, I have a style for each pip. I tried to balance the two styles as well as the main colour for each card. For the two red suits (hearts and diamonds) I decided on using black as the background, with everything else being white. I used one of the geometrical styles and one of the illustrative styles, in order to create a balance. As you can see, I did the same for the black suits (clubs and spades) but with a white background instead.

As I have explained, I decided to go with four different styles for each card. This was an idea I had to make the cards fit with the theme “multiverse”, as the idea behind it is four worlds, joined together. My plan is to unify these designs with the packaging, and the reverse of the card.

After thinking about this idea I played around with some names, which I will cover in the next post.

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Tilde Key Workshop:

This work shop involved the use of the tilde key on my keyboard. This key basically allows you to draw using the shape tool, and you can make all sorts of cool patterns with its, as you can see above.

It was a very simple task, but it produced some really cool outcomes. It involved holding the tilde key, drawing using the mouse and then editing the colours by expanding the shapes. I used block colours and gradients, and decided a blue to pink gradient looked best.

This was a very simple way of creating a cool pattern, and this could very easily be used for my cards. It would look cool as a part of the packaging, or even on the back of the cards.

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Card Experiment 6:

This was my final experimentation for my deck of cards. I wanted to try an illustrative style for these cards, and I think I executed it quite well. I also wanted to create a balance between good and evil, to once again separate the two halves and give the card personality (something I’m really trying to do with these cards). I did quite like how this style turned out, an I think it would be interesting to see on a deck, but I'm not sure how well it would fit with the other design styles, as the use of animals might not work too well.

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Card Experiment 5:

This is a fifth experiment I did for my cards. This is a more abstract style, using fairly geometric shapes. I really liked this style, and It was fun to play around with and create the outcomes.

I used the shape tool and shape builder tool in order to create the shapes. I like how I used the eyes to create a separation between the two halves, I think it gives the cards some personality and a story.

This would definitely be an interesting style to incorporate into my deck, as it’s a very modern style which would juxtapose the usual, traditional deck which is the main thing I’m trying to achieve with this deck.

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Card Experiment 4:

this was another experiment for my cards. This style was inspired by the process I discovered previously, using a gradient mesh and clipping masks.

For the card on the left, I made a black and white gradient mesh, and used the silhouette of a king, and merged it with a stroke to make it less symmetrical and basic. I quite like how these turned out, and it was a very interesting process. However, I feel like some of the detail of the king is lost due to how the gradient mesh blends into the black background.

If I was to use this design for my cards, I think I’d have to position the mask better so that I could make sure none of the detail was lost.

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Card Experiment 3:

This was a design style I hadn’t even considered or remembered existed, until I got bored one night and decided to play about with drawings. I made a continuous line drawing and then it hit me that it would probably look good as a card. I experimented and Created the outcome above. It was a relatively pain-staking process, as I was drawing it on photoshop and it took a while for me to get it done in one line in a way that looked right, however I believe I executed it quite well. I drew one half of the queen, and then duplicated and rotated it so that both sides would match.

This is definitely a design style I could use for my cards, as I really like how it’s illustrative but also fairly simple.

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The pips:

To create the pips i used shapes, lines and the shape builder tool (please ignore the fact that the heart is upside down).

To create the club, heart and spade I used the same shape you can see in the first image, but made sure only to select the shapes that I needed using the shape builder tool (hence why the heart turned out upside down, I forgot to flip it!). The diamond used a similar process, but using a different shape.

I really like how these turned out, and they'll definitely be usable for my cards, as they look like the Pips from a standard deck. Of course I will edit these to fit my four design styles.

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Card Experiment 2:

For this card experiment I wanted to use the op art process I previously posted. I tried this in two ways, but ditched the first.

My first thought was using three op art circles and combining them, however this didn't really sell the optical look I was going for, so I decided to try something different.

I went with a hexagonal shape, and then used the op art process to create what I'd use for the mask. I then outlined the shape of a queen and created a clipping mask,which created the outcome you can see above.

This is something I could definitely use for my cards, but I'd like to experiment further before settling on this one.

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Card experimentation:

This was the first card experiment I did, I wanted to go for a “graffiti” look, similar to the style of Basquiat and Jack Carden. My first attempt wasn’t quite what I wanted it to be, I tried to keep the separations of the card I used as a base, which restricted what I could draw, and It didn’t have the right look, but it definitely set the base for the idea.

My second attempt was a little better, as I got rid of the lines and made the design entirely my own, but it still wasn’t quite right. The main problem I had with this was the fact that I still used the whit silhouette, it made the design look to clean, which was the exact opposite of what I was trying to achieve.

My last attempt came out much better, as I ditched the silhouette and drew around it instead, using a white brush on a black background. I really like how it came out, so I duplicated and flipped it to see what it would look like as a full card, and I really liked the look of the design. I decided that this would be one of the design styles used in my deck, so the next step was to draw everything else I would need: the queen, jack, numbers/letters, and pips.

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Repeating pattern:

This was a fun and rlly useful process to do. It involved creating shapes and gradients and then placing them randomly in a square, and then creating a pattern,

To create the shapes I basically used the shape tool for the circle, and the pen tool for the triangles. I used strokes, gradients and fills to create the shapes, and then I alt-clicked them in order to repeat the shapes.

Then, I selected all of the shapes and went to Object > Pattern > Make to turn the shapes into a pattern, which allows me to use it as a fill.

I think I'll use this technique for my cards, as it would definitely be helpful to creating the backs of the cars, for which I'll use some sort of repeating pattern.

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Zentangle artwork:

This is my zentangle outcome. This was an interesting process, that I quite enjoyed creating but I didn't like the outcome all too much.

As you can see, I was am idiot and forgot to take any photos of the first steps of the technique, so I'll have to use my best description of it. The first step was to draw an outline of the animal being turned into a zentangle. The trick with this was to not add too much detail, and to just stick with the larger shapes, as this was make it easier to create the outcome. The next step was to seperate the outline into different, more sporadic shapes. The last step of what I like the call the "construction process" was to draw a big wiffly line over the drawing, making sure each loop touches, to create more shapes.

The next step was the colour. For this, you should use bright, contrasting colours and patterns. I apparently forgot how to use colour entirely and chose a fairly ugly pallette, however I continued nonetheless. What I had to do was colour each shape, making sure that the colours and patterns were fairly even across the design

The final stage was to add the outline using a black sharpie. This definitely brought the piece together a little more, and made it look a lot better, however I still regret my colour choice.

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King of Cards Conversation:

After trying some designs I decided to run a fairly out of the box idea by the company this project is based on: King of Cards.

I'd had this idea but I wasn't sure how well it'd fit with the project, or the company so I thought who better to contact than the company themselves.

My idea was to create a deck of cards featuring four different design styles, one for each suit. My thinking was that this would fit perfectly with the theme of Multiverse as its as if there's four worlds living inside the box. I decided I'd use the deck box and back if the cards to tie all of the cards together to make th unified into one deck.

J got into contact with Lewis Webb from King of Cards, who told me my idea was "interesting and certainly fits the brief" as well as having "lots of potential".

This consolidated my idea and i instantly started thinking about what design styles I could use and what the name would be. I haven't quite settled on a name, and there will be some branding experimentation coming soon, but I've chosen the four designs in my previous post to persue furtyer, as they were my most effective ideas. This could change however.

I'm sticking with the colour theme I decided on previously, as I think this would be an extra step to unifying the designs, ut there's a lot of work still to do!

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Pip Experimentation:

These are four sets of pips I created in relation to some of the card sketches I did. I tried to make the Pips match the style of card I was going for and I think I executed it well.

For the first set, I created the Pips using the shape builder tool (I used these pips as a base for the rest) and tried to make them fit with the animal theme in the sketch. To do this I added some subtle fur using the brush tool in illustrator. I think this worked well for all of the Pips other than the diamond, because due to the shape it was hard to add natural looking fur.

The second set of pips used the same base, and for these I simply split them into two colours down the middle to fit the abstract theme of the sketch. These turned out really well, because despite being really simplistic I think they'd compliment the style of the card and would look good when arranged into an actual playing card.

The third set of pips were not created using my illustrator pips, but they were instead drawn in Photoshop by hand on my drawing tablet. These are probably my favourite pips, and the definitely relate to the sketch, and I really like this style in general so I was super please with these outcomes.

The final set took the longest. I used the same base pips as the first two, but for these I used a a process I have previously covered, using a gradient mesh. I then put the Pips on top of the mesh and made a clipping mask, which put the mesh into the Pips. I made sure to use a different area of the gradient for each pop to vary it a little. This is another outcome I really liked, and another one that would look great on a card.

Doing these cards I've come to the conclusion that I want my cards to be very monochrome, using only black and white for the designs, but using mainly white for two suits and mainly black for the other two.

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Op Art Pips:

These are four pips I created using my op art outcomes and the same process I used in the previous posts.

Once again, this created some really interesting outcomes, and I personally think these ones look better than the marbled ones. I really like the way the different lines seem to twist around each other and the monochrome colours are really effective, and I think I'll definitely use this going forward.