Tom was suggesting a deck that was more of a signature piece - a design that's meant to capture the eye and show off the best card design possible in a single deck, one that marries the classic and the modern. It doesn't even have to be insanely elaborate - it just has to be beautiful and timeless.
A good example is the Sentinels deck. If you were dropped into your favorite author's fantasy-setting world of, say, the Victorian era or the old west, it wouldn't be too hard to imagine something like the Sentinels being the standard design. They're simple and practically minimalist, but they draw on a number of old cultural design elements - they're modern, nearly high-tech, but at the same time classic and drawing from old-school concepts, with a sort of Freemason aesthetic.
We wouldn't want to ape the Sentinels deck element-for-element, but it's a good general direction to head in. Imagine the courts being slightly more "painterly" in appearance and the teeny little pips on the spot cards being blown up to vintage-deck proportions, and that might be a first step to what would work very nicely.
While we do want to tie in 52+J and the Discourse, we also want it to be an attractive-enough deck that anyone who saw it would be interested in having a pack or two at home, or giving them as little gifts to friends and family. The point was raised that the UC deck was strictly a promotional deck - and they're right. It promoted the board and the board's owner at the time. We should want this to be a deck with a much broader appeal than just the people who hang out on message boards talking about playing cards all day and night...
