Hello folks,
This is Zaid, the designer of the Eira Ice deck.
I actually did consider putting the spot card snowflakes in the background behind the pips, and that was fine for the low value cards, but for the higher value cards, the pips obscured the snowflakes too much. The whole point of the deck is to showcase the snowflakes on the spot cards. I also considered doing without the pips altogether, but I thought that having the face pips would make the deck more functional in gameplay.
Regarding the arrangement of the pips themselves, I played around with a bunch of different ideas, including arranging the pips concentrically around the arms of the snowflake, but that made the pips too small and too busy for the high value cards. I wanted a regular arrangement of pips so that when you flip from one card to the next in order, you see only a small movement. Ultimately, I had to compromise and ended up with what's on the cards now.
When the project reaches 300 backers or so, I'd like to do a survey and let backers vote on whether to have the face pips or not.
Zaid