The members on this site really know what they're talking about. I don't know much about the design process, but I am a poker player and I just wanted to say that I am surprised by the following advice.

'some people who will straight-up not buy a deck that has alternate pip designs - they prefer their clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds.'

I would of imagined that the purists would not buy custom cards at all and those that would will appreciate the new suits. I don't understand the need to equate the suits at all, it doesn't affect the math or function of the cards in anyway. I think saying a card is both an undead and a spade is needlessly convoluted and makes it less clear and negatively affects the design.

I'm designing a deck for myself which I intend to use for practice and the suits have no relation to the traditional ones - but then my deck isn't mean't to be commercial.

The members here have a lot more experience than I do. I just wanted to say I play a lot of poker and I don't need the traditional suits, so I agree with the person that said make it how you want it to be, in all cases some people will like it and others won't .

I've been designing a deck of cards over the last few weeks. I got the the dimensions from a printing company and used a combination of GIMP and Adobe Illustrator to put my deck together. I plan to send it to print when I am done.

This is my first time designing a deck of cards, and using those programs. I am not an art student either, so please bare with me.

My question is an odd one but I want to get this right.

I've designed my own suits and used custom assets but I want to have a normal white background. It has occurred to me that pure white (ffffff) might be too bright. I just want the normal white background used by standard bicycle playing cards.

When I look at a standard deck of bicycle cards I don't know whether they are using pure white and that's how it looks when it's printed or they use a duller white to make it easier on the eyes. What do they use? Sorry if this is a stupid question, I haven't had anything printed before and I want it to be correct.

Thank you