Deck Idea Discussion

[ThereIsNoFace]

Hey Guys!

To make a short story long (hehe ), I have an idea of making a deck of cards that would honor people like Dai Vernon, D. Roth, etc.
Each J and K will have a face of a magician that significantly contributed to our magic world Also, I want to make each figure to do a signature move of that magician. What I mean is:
Let's say that I put Dai Vernon on the King of Spades, so the King would have Vernon's face and have his left hand closed in a fist, and his right hand waving over the fist. This would imitate Vernon's coin load from a thumb palm position into a fist.
I created this topic to ask you WHOM do you think I have to include (8 man, 4jacks 4 kings) and WHAT is his signature move?

P.S. I wrote 8 man because I don't know any famous women magicians, sorry ladies

[Don Boyer]

P.S. I wrote 8 man because I don't know any famous women magicians, sorry ladies

Then you haven't been looking in the right places...
http://www.all-about-magicians.com/femalemagicians.html

You'll need to bear in mind that using someone's image may require licensing.  While living magicians would be covered by copyright law, deceased ones might be covered by trademark law - you'd have to look up the estate of these magicians, assuming it's still active.  It would be one thing if you were publishing a news article for a newspaper about a particular magician because he'd done something newsworthy, but it would be quite another if you were simply creating a deck of cards and wanted their likeness.  In other words, you'd have a lot of legal legwork to do and licensing fees to pay, making it somewhat expensive to print your deck.  Your best shot to avoid the fees is to use images of magicians that are no longer alive and don't have an active estate in place.  Someone like Harry Houdini would almost certainly have an estate that uses his image as a trademark, but someone like the magician whose name formed the basis of his name, Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, is much less likely to have an active estate and his image would be in the public domain and not a trademark.

Were you considering entering the deck design contest we're running?  The winner gets their deck published by the Expert Playing Card Company and receives 36 dozen decks of their winning design.  You have slightly more than a month left to make a submission.  This link will take you to the rules.

[ThereIsNoFace]

Looks like I have a lot to rethink about...

[Don Boyer]

Looks like I have a lot to rethink about...

A good way to dodge the legal issues would be to create court characters that are similar to famous magicians but adequately different so as not to be confused with them - and not using any of those famous names to identify your courts.  You'd either use a made-up name or, perhaps better, no names at all...  It might even be funny to do some head-swapping - for example, a Harry Houdini-esque head on a pseudo-Doug Henning body and vice versa!  Penn and Teller-like heads on Siegfried and Roy-like bodies in full regalia!  You would, in essence, have the "sawing a woman in half" trick but happening at neck height and switching heads and bodies around.