Pinstripe Playing Cards - The Front Design

Some insights into the Pinstripes 😉

Hey Again! Thanks for joining me for the second installment of Pinstripe Playing Cards. In the last post you read about the backstory how I got into designing playing cards. For this post, we jump right in!

I got to thinking, since I learned I wanted to focus on art instead of game mechanics. I had just received my prototype in the mail for one of my previous card games, so I was familiar with the company makeplayingcards.com. Why not try my hand at designing and printing a deck of playing cards?

How many of you recognize these cards here? I am sure that many of you do 😊 Do they even make other kinds of cards?!

Also, why should I reinvent the wheel...or better yet, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! I thought for sure, if I was going to design some cards, they would have to be different.

And luckily for me, I was not trying to fix a problem with this project. If these good classic cards already exist, then I could design my own cards out of pure enjoyment 😅

Traditional cards are designed with Pips on the front - these are the suit symbols. For example, the 6 of Hearts has 6 heart symbols on the front of it, or rather, 6 Pips. My radical change to the playing card design was to re-think the concept of Pips. How to do it differently?

So if the pips tell us what a card value is....why does it need to be symbols? We can always look at the top corner of the cards to see the number and the suit. Do we even really need the pips? Well, they surely make the cards more interesting. Otherwise, they would have a lot of blank space on them.

Here is an idea - 6 lines, 6 pips! Each card could have the corresponding number of lines and they would surely look interesting!

Ok, you might say - "but the pips easily show me what suit the card is. I don't always look at the top corner!"

Enter the 6 of Diamonds. Not so easy to tell the difference between suits when the cards are both red and white. Well, I have come up with an easy solution for you 😝 The inverted designs. If its a white card with red stripes, you have a Diamond. If its a red card with white stripes, you have a Heart. (Same concept for the Spades and Clubs)

So I carried on with my design and received the prototype in the mail a couple months later. I didn't think much of it at the time, but when I posted it on Instagram in October 2018....it got the most likes I had ever seen!! https://www.instagram.com/p/BpMRsXPg_XD/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

That's when I realized there is a niche market for playing card collectors. Magicians, cardists, poker players, enthusiasts, all looking for something unique or different than the classic playing cards we all know and love. I have spent the last 8 months completely immersed in this hobby. Learning and absorbing everything I can to provide the best product to the market. I have become quite a playing card hobbyist myself.

When I do produce this deck at a large scale in the next two months, I will be printing with the United States Playing Card Company (USPCC). The same great company that prints the Bicycle playing cards. They have a standard of quality that few companies can match.

As a bonus, when you lay out the Pinstripe Playing Cards, the pips form a really cool pattern 😎

Until next time!

☮♥RSM.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/redshellmartell/pinstripe-playing-cards-by-rsm-productions