This is another project for my Digital Prepress class, and this has become one of my favorite projects to date. The goal was simple; create a concept for a full deck (52 cards plus 2 jokers) of playing cards. However, the goal is much easier said than done.
To start the project, I came up with different iterations of what I wanted my playing cards to be, and I decided on making them in the style of my brand identity. I did this with the thought that I could one day make more of these, and hand them out in addition to business cards, to show that I have a strong sense of maintaining a strong and cohesive brand identity across different mediums.
After the sketching phase, I went into Illustrator to start developing the illustrations for the cards, and almost immediately came across my first hurdle, which was deciding how my suit icons would look, as each could only be one color, I had to make sure that the design of the icon would look good enough by itself without relying on the second color.
After the icon development, I designed the face cards, which I followed my initial sketch very closely. The only changes I made from sketch to screen was taking the "G" icon out, and replacing it with the respective suit icon.
After the designing and printing was finished, the next step in the process was cutting the cards. At my previous school, we did not have the incredible tool, the Glowforge (also mentioned in the AetherBar page), and I would've had to cut each card by hand. With the awesome power of the Glowforge, I uploaded a .SVG file of the cutline for the cards (2.5x3.5) and all my cards were cut in about 5 minutes! Lots of time saved, and the cards look incredible!