A quick note for readers here: We have made two modifications to the deck design which we feel keep the integrity of the design and yet satisfy some of the practical needs of the card collecting and magician community. The first, we have very subtly faded the swords of the jacks so they do not bleed off the edge. We felt this actually enhanced the image as it appears as if the swords are disappearing into the background mist. The second being that we added a white border to the back. This last edit was a difficult decision as the original image bleed on the back was a nod to French/German card backs dating from 1600's to the 1800's. As designers though, an important part of our philosophy is functionality and practicality in anything we create, and from the feedback we received it seems to be a very important element for collectors and magicians. It has been fascinating receiving feedback from this community and will no doubt only serve to enhance our future designs for upcoming decks.
A quick question for you Don: what was the big brouhaha with the Artifice deck?
I like the changes you made - they're attractive and practical. If you wanted, you could do a "fade to edge" similar to Theory11's Bee Stingers, or similar with a tighter, more narrow border, like Encarded's Tendril deck.
The story...
Ellusionist released a deck around the middle of last year, give or take a month or so, called Artifice. It had completely custom fronts and a very elegant and luxurious-looking back. But magicians had a problem with an all-white face and an predominantly-black back, particularly at the edge. Any trick using a flipped card became immediately noticeable. In addition, the trend for decks printed black into the bleed waned around that time because when handled and shuffled under ordinary circumstances, those black edges chipped in a way that was immediately noticeably and not very pretty. Ellusionist took all of this into account, ceased production on the two existing models (a blue deck that was widely available and a red deck that was limited to a print run of 5,000) and labeled them as "version 1" - then released "version 2" with a nearly-identical, white-bordered back on a blue deck and a green deck.
The magicians were happy, but the card collectors threw fits, saying that the white border ruined the look of the deck and yelling about how the deck was altered just to suit a bunch of magicians who complained. Ellusionist's response to the collectors was that the red version 1 deck wasn't remade in a version 2, making it a true collector's item. Now even the blue version 1 decks are starting to fetch higher prices due to being out of print and loved by collectors.
In the end, as much as the collectors wanted the deck kept the same, Ellusionist is a magic company first, a card company second, catering far more to the needs of the magic community than the card collectors. Some card collectors hold a grudge over that, saying they'll never buy any more of their decks again. For a few months, collectors and magicians were arguing over the pros and cons of the switch, sometimes rather strongly.
