Quote from: tniou on June 24, 2012, 03:50:13 AM

Hey guys,

I designed this deck and just wanted to let you know that I appreciate all the feedback.  I'm taking notes on things you guys have mentioned for future references and welcome more critiques. 

This deck is primarily an experiment in terms of designing--going through iterations and figuring out what works and what doesn't.  As a first attempt, I'm not expecting much success, but I am anticipating a pretty steep learning curve.  I've already learned a lot in terms of what things people are generally looking for, what things nobody likes, and what things that have polarizing opinions.  As an architectural design student, I understand that it's impossible to please everyone, but it's always beneficial to listen to what other people have to say.

I also apologize if my attempt at trying to be productive over my summer break to create things for my design portfolio has offended any of you guys.

Take whatever we say with a grain of salt.  We're card collectors mostly, with a few designers in the mix as well.  We're rough on critiques because we're pretty demanding in general.

But never forget that guys and girls like us only represent something short of 1% of your potential audience!

Now, consider if you will, what is your ultimate goal with this deck?  If it's a design exercise, that's great.  You can take it into all kinds of different directions.  If it's meant to be used as a deck of cards, there are certain aspects of this design that are a little lacking.

A useable deck has to have readily visible pips and indices, ones that are easily distinguished from each other, particularly the pips that share the same color.  While the minimal design is cool-looking, it's not as practical as most card players/users would prefer.

If you wanted to attract flourishers, you need to get something in the corners of that back design and make the border as thin as you can get it.  The values for the indices are great, very clear, easily read - but the pips need help.  Make them bigger, perhaps.

Consider rounding some aspects of the shapes.  For example, I'd round the two points on the top of the heart, and I'd use something like a cube with three half-circles and a base for a club.  By altering the design to make each color have a "rounded" suit and an "angular" suit, you've increased the useability a great deal.  Any deck I've ever had that has clubs that look too much like spades and hearts that look too much like diamonds, it was hellish trying to play with them.

I have no idea what direction you were planning to go with the court cards (jacks, queens and kings).  That king you've shown so far bears more resemblance to a can of motor oil than a member of royalty.  You can push the design aesthetic if that's what you're aiming for, but push too far and no one will be using your design because it's too "out there" for them to be comfortable with.  You can maintain the "core" aesthetic by simply having that core function as the "divider" between the two faces that appear on a court card.  Consider removing the frames from your court cards.  I think they'd look more attractive without them.  And give them some kind of face!  You were inspired by the power core from the Iron Man movies?  What about borrowing from the Iron Suit as well when crafting your royalty cards?  You need not go for direct imitation, but you could make something much more visually appealing.

I like the names of the cards in the curves around the core.  To me, that's an attractive detail.  The circular pattern for placement of pips I also like.  Consider making them a little larger, to fill in just a wee bit more empty real estate on the card itself and make them easier on the eyes.  When pips are too small, they're harder to differentiate from each other.

Oh, and as far as this simply being a "summer break" project - think again!  You'll be well into your fall semester, maybe even into the winter break, before your deck sees the light of day outside the USPC factory.  Then comes the challenging task of distribution.  "It's not just a job, it's an adventure!"  Your Kickstarter will be done in just under a month, but USPC is already running a backlog of projects and just took a two-week break - closed, no decks being made at all!  You might be queued to get printing in September or so, if you're lucky.

If you're aiming at collectors, there's many that are loyal to USPC, but a huge subset of those are loyal to the Bicycle brand.  Consider making it an overfunding goal - get us to X dollars and we'll brand it as a Bicycle deck!  It's similar to what the highly-successful "The Grid" deck did for their recently-completed Kickstarter project.

Well, my brain's just about friend now.  Anyone else wanna offer up some wisdom?

Thanks, Don!

I'm used to taking critiques.  That's pretty much what architecture school is like; we spend all our time designing something and creating models just so we can present it in front of a group of jurors who tell us how much we suck.  Then we repeat the process, haha.

I really like the idea of the angular and rounded suit for the pips.  If I ultimately don't change it for this deck, I will definitely go for it on my next deck if it ever happens.  I will increase the size of the pips--I agree that they could be bigger.

I think the court cards have had the most polarizing opinions so far.  I had thought about bringing in more Iron Man/mecha related court cards, but I didn't want to risk the chance of being sued by Marvel.  I will try to find a workable solution.

I'm expecting this thing to take a while--thus setting the estimated delivery date at January 2013.  I guess what I meant by the summer project was the designing process itself.  I'm planning on making the Bicycle branding an overfunding goal.

I am also in the process of a few updated back designs that I will put up for a vote on Kickstarter.  Hopefully they will be completed by the end of Monday or Tuesday.