Official Contest Rules:

RULE ZERO: TO ALL MEMBERS.  ONLY POST IN THE CONTEST TOPIC IF YOU ARE SUBMITTING A CONTEST ENTRY.  ONLY POST IN THIS TOPIC IF YOU ARE ENTERING THE CONTEST AND HAVE ANY RULES-RELATED QUESTIONS.  ALL OTHER POSTS WILL BE DELETED.  PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT ON THE POTENTIAL CONTEST ENTRIES ON THE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT BOARD ("Design/Dev") TOPICS FOR EACH OF THE SAID ENTRIES.

1. ELIGIBILITY - This contest is open to all registered members in good standing of the Discourse at PlayingCardForum.com ("the Forum") when you submit your entry.  Entries as a team or a design company are permitted but the Forum accepts no responsibility for assisting in the dividing and distribution of the prize among the winners on a given team or in a given company.  If you are under the age of legal consent where you live, you must have a parent or guardian who can legally represent you in the event that you win and who must grant permission for you to enter the contest; failure to obtain parent/guardian permission to enter will result in disqualification of your entry.  Your work must be original and you must own all copyrights, trade marks, service marks and artwork that are incorporated into your contest entry's design; if you do not, your entry will be disqualified.  You may NOT submit work you have licensed from another party, though you may submit work that a co-entrant created as a team effort with your input or a salaried employee of your design company has created while employed with said company - you may be required to submit proof to this effect and failure to do so when requested will result in your entry being disqualified.  Limit of one entry per member; if your entry is disqualified, you are not permitted to make a new entry.  Contest Stage One begins as of the date and time the contest topic is posted in the Playing Card Plethora board of the Forum.  Stage One continues and Stage Two begins Sunday, 18 May 2014, 04:00 UTC.  Stage One and Two end and Stage Three begins Tuesday, 01 July 2014, 04:00 UTC.  Contest ends Tuesday, 15 July 2014, 04:00 UTC, with a winner to be announced shortly thereafter.

2. FINAL DECISION - In the event of a dispute regarding the contest rules, the ruling of the administrators of the Forum is the final, binding word.  Should any dispute be brought before a court of law or a legal arbitrator, the contest will be declared as null and void, without any winners.

3. PRE-ENTRY (STAGE ONE) - Post your design in a new topic on the Design and Development Board ("Design/Dev") to work on and solicit comment from the membership of the Forum.  The topic title must bear the tag (DDDC) at the beginning to specify that it is for a possible entry in the Discourse Deck Design Contest.  You may only post your final, completed design on the contest topic {see Section 4, "Entry (Stage Two)"}.  You may also post questions on the rules topic to the Head Administrator of the Forum regarding how they specifically apply to your work.  Refrain from using Private Messaging to reach the Head Administrator unless your question posted in the Forum remains unanswered for exactly seventy-two (72) hours after you posted it, unless there are fewer than seventy-two (72) hours remaining before the start of Stage Three.

4. ENTRY (STAGE TWO) - You must upload your deck design's images to this topic, limit of five images per post, limit of 5000 kilobytes per image file.  You are permitted to use up to three consecutive entries to present up to a total of fifteen images.  Your images must be marked in some legally-accepted manner to show your copyright to each image.  Explanatory text is not mandatory but is highly recommended in order to attract votes in Stage Three.  An acceptable entry must conform generally to the playing card design standard known as "Anglo-American" in terms of card ranks, suits and quantity of cards and must have, at the minimum:

a) a model name, and an original brand name if applicable (trademarks and brand names of other companies, including but not limited to the United States Playing Card Company ["USPC"], the Expert Playing Card Company ("EPCC"), etc., may not be used).
b) a completed tuck box design presented in "assembled" appearance.  EPCC reserves the right to edit the box design to conform with design standards they are capable of producing.
c) a completed card back design.
d) a completed face image of the court cards, jokers (or joker, in the event of a deck having only one joker or having two identical jokers, or no joker at all if your deck design doesn't include any), Ace of Spades, extra cards (including but not limited to advertisement or gaff cards), one representative card of rank between 2 and 10 in each of the four Anglo-American suits (spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds).
e) any other design features that are unique to your design, including but not limited to features such as other unique Ace designs besides the Ace of Spades; hidden card markings, one-way marks or card reveals; unique pip arrangements on any of the cards varying from but still generally conforming to the Anglo-American standard; etc.

Please note that the EPCC standard uncut sheet creates only 54 (fifty-four) cards - take this into account when planning and creating your deck design!  We are working with EPCC to make the uncut and tuck box templates available before the beginning of Stage Two - however, do NOT use the templates of any other company as they will not be useable for printing by EPCC.

You may use any medium in which to create your design that can be scanned (if applicable) and presented on a deck of poker-sized playing cards.  Your submitted entry image files may be scanned from another medium, entirely computer-generated or a combination of the two methods of image generation.  Such media would include, but not be limited to, pencil sketches, watercolors, oil-based paint, a digital art creation program, cut paper, photographs, etc.

You may use, in lieu of a fully-custom face design, any Anglo-American/International design in the public domain or offered for use by EPCC, recolored as you see fit for your entry.  (There is no guarantee that EPCC will provide standard face designs for your use.)

You are permitted to include images of the entire deck, should you choose to do so, within the limits described in the first paragraph of section 4 of the rules.  Your images submitted here should be of suitable resolution for presentation on a web page, but you are also required to have higher resolution images of all design elements for the purpose of printing.  We strongly encourage you to use vector artwork; if you must use raster art, it must be in layers, be at least 1200 dpi for anything with line art and 600 dpi for other images.  You are permitted, at your own expense, to hire an artist to execute the creation of the images in your design if you are unable to do so yourself effectively, but the design itself must be entirely of your own devising and not created by the artist or based on the artist's other work.  Designs that leave out any of the required elements may be disqualified and your official entry posts may be deleted at the discretion of the Forum Administrators.

Any entry containing images considered illegal to possess or view anywhere in the United States, Canada or in the entrant's home country and local area or region will be immediately disqualified and deleted.  Said entry will be surrendered to law enforcement officers/agencies upon request.  Examples would include, but not be limited to, images representing Nazi Party iconography, displaying acts of a pornographic nature devoid of artistic merit, nude images or photography of any kind with a model who is, appears to be or is presented as below the age of consent regardless of actual age, etc.

5. VOTING (STAGE THREE) - A poll will be added to the contest topic for the purpose of allowing the Forum membership to vote on the entries deemed as officially submitted.  Limit of one vote per Forum member.

The voting must be won by a clear majority (any amount greater than 50% of all votes cast).  In the event of a plurality or a tie for most votes received at the end of Stage Three, a run-off election will be held for the tied entries or the top two entries as applicable, to be started on Tuesday, 15 July 2014 between 04:00 and 10:00 UTC and concluded by Thursday, 17 July 2014, 04:00 UTC.  Should that run-off election also result in a tie for most votes, a winner will be chosen by the Forum's Administrators (or an Administrator's specifically-designated representative, should they be unable to participate in the selection) from among the two entries in the run-off election and announced within one week of the run-off election's closing time.

6. WINNER - Once a winner has been officially declared, said winner will submit copies of any and all required files to create the winning deck to EPCC or a designated official representative in the file formats and resolutions they designate.  Timetable for the printing and delivery of the contest prize, 432 decks of playing cards in the winning design, is entirely at the discretion of EPCC.  EPCC may require minor modifications of the design, made by either the winner or EPCC, as EPCC chooses, for technical reasons, should they be unable to print it as presented for any reason whatsoever.  In such an event, EPCC will make a good-faith effort to print the deck as close to the contest representation as is possible within their limitations.

You must grant EPCC an exclusive license to print your design without royalty beyond the contest prize itself.  EPCC will print extra decks of your design for sale in an effort to recoup the costs of sponsorship of this contest.  When the EPCC declares they have no further interest in printing the winning design or simply stops printing the winning design, printing rights for said design will revert back to the contest winner exactly one (1) year after the final print run is offered for sale by EPCC, or at any time prior by mutual consent.  If you are unwilling or unable to grant printing rights to EPCC or accept EPCC design modifications for any reason, your contest entry will be declared void and another winner will be chosen by the Forum Administrators - either the entry that received the next-most votes or, in the event of a run-off election, the other entry involved in said run-off election.  In the event of any legal or financial hindrance on the production of the winning deck design as determined solely by EPCC, said design will be declared void and another winner chosen in a manner as described earlier in this section of the rules.

7. CONSENT - Posting an entry to the contest topic during Stage Two of the contest will act as your acceptance of the rules of the contest.  Your avatar name and avatar image may be used by either the Forum or EPCC for promotional purposes.  In the event that you win the contest, your name, photographic image, country, state/province/region and city may also be used by the Forum or EPCC for promotional purposes, but if you have specific issues regarding retaining your privacy and not revealing anything other than your avatar name or avatar image, the Forum and/or EPCC will negotiate an arrangement with the winner to address such issues.

8. DISQUALIFICATION - Any member of the Forum who submits an entry and subsequently breaks any contest rule may be declared by the Forum Administrators as ineligible to win any prize from this contest at their sole discretion.

9. RULES CHANGES - The ownership of the Forum reserves the right to change the contest rules in any way without advance notice, to disqualify an entry for any specific cause, or to declare the contest null and void, without any winner.

10. GENERAL - Contest is void where prohibited.  Estimated retail value of the prize varies based on features included in the winning deck's design.  The odds of winning the prize are based on the total number of entries, artistic ability and the voting results, and thus can not be estimated in advance.  Forum Administrators or their families are not permitted to enter or vote in the contest.  Other Forum Employees may participate in the manner of any eligible member of the Discourse unless disqualified.  Any and all taxes or fees are the sole responsibility of the winner.

Another rules question submitted to me via PM:

Hey, I asked this in my "hard angle" thread but I don't think you saw it since I just modified my last post.

Is there a rule about how many submissions you can have?  If for example I say that my "hard angle" design is now for the contest, can I then turn around and create a new topic with a different design I was working on?

I will quote from Rule 1 - ELIGIBILITY.

Limit of one entry per member; if your entry is disqualified, you are not permitted to make a new entry.

I know the rules are long, but please read them.  You may find that most of your questions are covered in the rules.

Quote from: Don Boyer on April 18, 2014, 10:00:06 PM

Official Contest Rules:

3. PRE-ENTRY (STAGE ONE) - Post your design in a new topic on the Design and Development Board ("Design/Dev") to work on and solicit comment from the membership of the Forum.  The topic title must bear the tag (DDDC) at the beginning to specify that it is for a possible entry in the Discourse Deck Design Contest.  You may only post your final, completed design on the contest topic {see Section 4, "Entry (Stage Two)"}.  You may also post questions on the rules topic to the Head Administrator of the Forum regarding how they specifically apply to your work.  Refrain from using Private Messaging to reach the Head Administrator unless your question posted in the Forum remains unanswered for exactly seventy-two (72) hours after you posted it, unless there are fewer than seventy-two (72) hours remaining before the start of Stage Three.

OK, I have a question. If I have two different deck designs, and want to see which one garners the most interest, can I post both to the Design board, and tag both posts (DDDC), and then, when I see which design is more wanted, submit that one to the Contest topic? It is a little unclear to me, probably due to me not being native English speaking.

You may, in fact, post two different decks in Design/Dev - I never actually forbade it in the rules.  But when it comes time to make your entry in the Playing Card Plethora, you get exactly one entry.

For the sake of avoiding confusion, please let the members know what your plans are and cross-link the deck topics.

This is my first post so sorry if it's a stupid question, but how do you access the design board?

The only stupid question is the one you fail to ask because you thought it was too stupid.  True answers are never stupid.

If you click on the big Discourse logo at the top of the page, you'll see our home page, listing all the boards we have on this forum.  In the section labeled "Playing Card Chat," you'll see that the fifth board listed is called "Design & Development" - that's the design board.  It's always a good idea to check out the other boards - there's a lot of information here.

Here's a link for you to use to get there directly.
http://www.playingcardforum.com/design-development/

Okay, I think this might fall into a little bit of a grey area, and I'd like some clarification. (I am braced for getting slammed on this one.)

I have a design idea in mind that I am pursuing with a friend of mine. It is an homage to Russian-style decks, which observe the Anglo-American suits and courts, but they feature the cyrillic letters representing the courts/aces rather than the English (the K for Karol/King is the same, but a Russian д for Dama/Queen and a Russian B (their "v") for Valet/Jack and a T for Tuce/Ace). Would these non-English letters be allowed in the indexes for these otherwise Anglo-American ranks?

Thanks.

You must grant EPCC an exclusive license to print your design without royalty beyond the contest prize itself.  EPCC will print extra decks of your design for sale in an effort to recoup the costs of sponsorship of this contest.  When the EPCC declares they have no further interest in printing the winning design or simply stops printing the winning design, printing rights for said design will revert back to the contest winner exactly one (1) year after the final print run is offered for sale by EPCC, or at any time prior by mutual consent.  If you are unwilling or unable to grant printing rights to EPCC or accept EPCC design modifications for any reason, your contest entry will be declared void and another winner will be chosen by the Forum Administrators - either the entry that received the next-most votes or, in the event of a run-off election, the other entry involved in said run-off election.  In the event of any legal or financial hindrance on the production of the winning deck design as determined solely by EPCC, said design will be declared void and another winner chosen in a manner as described earlier in this section of the rules.

This is a clause similar to what self publishers in the print business try and avoid. In the print industry, traditional publishers have a similar rights clause, where the rights to the book don't revert back to the author until a certain time after the last printing. (this often doesn't happen).

There should be a clear date when the rights revert back to the designer, not if both parties agree. To play Devil's Advocate, what if EPCC decides then never want to revert the rights back to the designer?

I believe there should be a reasonable end date to the contract AND/OR at any time prior by mutual consent.

This is not an attack on EPCC, but I think it might be good to revisit this.

So, Troy, are you considering entering the contest yourself?

You appear to have misread or misunderstood the quote.  I highlighted a pertinent phrase in red in the middle of your quote of the rules.  There is a clear date for the determination of print rights, and that's one year after the final print run of the deck is offered by EPCC for sale.  If a year lapses since a given print run has been first offered for sale, that is in essence the final print run as described earlier in the rule.  The mutual consent portion of the rule comes into play solely in the event that the winner and Expert PCC mutually agree that they'd like to terminate the agreement earlier than the one-year wait period.  The only way EPCC could retain the rights in perpetuity would be if they continually kept printing and selling the design within one year after the most recent previous print run went on sale.  While it's not impossible for this to take place, this is a very unlikely occurrence, factoring in that EPCC specializes in single-run limited editions printed in small numbers.

What you suggest about self-publishers and book print rights isn't quite the same as what occurs in the playing card business, as far as I can tell.  When you consider what "gun-for-hire" deck designers receive as a flat-rate payment from playing card companies for a new deck design and the fact that they usually don't ever get the rights to their design back, this is a pretty good deal.  Further, consider that the winner risks zero dollars in the process and receives a level of recognition and prestige within the deck design and printing communities that could lead to future design work.  Even designers that enter but don't win can receive a level of recognition that they would not have received under different circumstances by getting exposure through this contest.

Thank you for taking the time to answer. You make some interesting points. In the book world, traditional publishers are evil. For example, many times they hold authors works forever, selling an ebook and avoid the rights going back to the authors. In addition, they can do smaller print runs just to keep the rights.

Obviously a print run with cards is different. While unlikely, there is the possibility the way the language is written that if they continually kept printing, they retain the rights. The spirit of the contest is excellent and hopefully the winner of the contest and EPCC do well.

I'm tinkering with designs and trying to figure out the whole process. I'm currently experimenting with creating back designs while becoming more proficient with the vectoring software. Realistically, I won't be able to finish on time. I'd like to enter, but I'm not ready to throw my hat in the ring. Maybe for the 2nd Discourse Deck Design Contest!

Hey Don, I apologize I cant find the templates for the EPCC anywhere I have been out of town just got back will be updating my card box in a bit cutting it close but it will get done.