Playing cards

“Playing cards were invented in China around the 9th century. Later around the 12th and 13th centuries they came into Egypt. From there they were spread across Europe. Playing cards first entered southern Europe in the 14th century. Their design were changed to represent European royalty and attendants”.

I always been fascinated with games and specially card games. I often sketch designs on paper for new cards. For this idea I used one of the most common category, the French (Hearts, Diamonds, Clovers and Spades). The idea was to make a straightforward yet dynamic design.
The concept starts with basic geometric shapes which I will later use to make the decoration of the cards.

Yet I didn’t wanted to make the design to rigid. In order to do that did some free hand draw that I applied  to the face of the figures.
With the Joker-card I felt more free to drew it as I like it, since Jokers do not have any standardized appearance across the card manufacturing industry.

In order to make the concept stronger, I added at least 2 details to each figure, such a hand holding a sword or a rose.

For the coloring of the deck I stuck to the usual colors: White, black and red. Gray and yellow were used as complementary.

The gradient on the front side of the cards helps to highlight the figures. For the backside I used a pattern made of geometrical shapes.

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