New Beautiful Macabre Deck

[Don Boyer]

I doubt the cards in this deck will get too muddy. This tends to happen when you have soft gradients in your image and the printer used cannot reproduce the small variances in value between the pixels. Nearly all of the toning in this deck is done with solid black lines or pointillism also known as stippling.... As a result the cards mainly contain solid black lines and dots to create the illusion of shading. So if MPC can print black... we should be good to go. If the color saturation is lessened by their printing process I'll be pretty pissed... but let's just hope for the best. In the end it's just a deck of cards I had fun making and wanted to share. I assure you I want this deck to look as good in actuality as the digital cards I created.

I only have 39 decks left at this point, all the rest have been reserved... so if you are interested in this deck please reserve one before they are all gone.

Again... this can be done at darkmattercards.com - click the "order your deck" button and follow instructions. I might be doing a run of uncut sheets here shortly depending on the interest level. If you are interested just follow the same instructions for ordering a deck... but ask to be added to the uncut sheet list. If i get enough people interested I'll do one run of these.

Thanks,
Mat

It's pretty simple.  For small orders, their printing process is that they use a printer - a computer printer, not a fancy offset printer.  In essence, it's the larger, bulkier cousin of that Epson or HP sitting on the desk of your home office.  And just like them, they can be a little problematic at times with accurate representation of colors.  You say, "if they can print black, fine" - but there's black, and there's black...  Admittedly, though, they have more problems with color than black, I believe.

I'm not even sure if they have offset presses for larger orders - they may do them all digitally.  We had an article for CARD CULTURE that was about MPC and we were ready to go to "press" with it, but they refused to provide photos of their printing operations - they told us to use the ones on their website, which were way too low in resolution for the magazine.  It leads one to believe that there's something they don't want people seeing - but of course, since I can't see it, I can't say that with any degree of accuracy.

[darkmatter]

I doubt the cards in this deck will get too muddy. This tends to happen when you have soft gradients in your image and the printer used cannot reproduce the small variances in value between the pixels. Nearly all of the toning in this deck is done with solid black lines or pointillism also known as stippling.... As a result the cards mainly contain solid black lines and dots to create the illusion of shading. So if MPC can print black... we should be good to go. If the color saturation is lessened by their printing process I'll be pretty pissed... but let's just hope for the best. In the end it's just a deck of cards I had fun making and wanted to share. I assure you I want this deck to look as good in actuality as the digital cards I created.

I only have 39 decks left at this point, all the rest have been reserved... so if you are interested in this deck please reserve one before they are all gone.

Again... this can be done at darkmattercards.com - click the "order your deck" button and follow instructions. I might be doing a run of uncut sheets here shortly depending on the interest level. If you are interested just follow the same instructions for ordering a deck... but ask to be added to the uncut sheet list. If i get enough people interested I'll do one run of these.

Thanks,
Mat

It's pretty simple.  For small orders, their printing process is that they use a printer - a computer printer, not a fancy offset printer.  In essence, it's the larger, bulkier cousin of that Epson or HP sitting on the desk of your home office.  And just like them, they can be a little problematic at times with accurate representation of colors.  You say, "if they can print black, fine" - but there's black, and there's black...  Admittedly, though, they have more problems with color than black, I believe.

I'm not even sure if they have offset presses for larger orders - they may do them all digitally.  We had an article for CARD CULTURE that was about MPC and we were ready to go to "press" with it, but they refused to provide photos of their printing operations - they told us to use the ones on their website, which were way too low in resolution for the magazine.  It leads one to believe that there's something they don't want people seeing - but of course, since I can't see it, I can't say that with any degree of accuracy.

I just received the cards yesterday and their origin was China.... I had no idea they would be printed there... but if they are trying to hide that fact, they are doing a poor job of it.

The cards came out pretty darn good I must say. One card -King of D- was a little dark for sure but all the rest look damn near perfect. The cards handle really well, they have the proper spring to them and fan nicely as well.

PayPal is up and ready for ordering on darkmattercards.com

These are just some quick cell phone pics. I'll be taking better pics shortly.

[Don Boyer]

I just received the cards yesterday and their origin was China.... I had no idea they would be printed there... but if they are trying to hide that fact, they are doing a poor job of it.

It's not that they're hiding that they're from China.  It's easy enough to discover with just a little looking.  But the nature of the operation is a different matter - as in, all-digital printing with no offset presses.  Or maybe they're just plain lazy about showing off their works to the world, but still, it was odd and seemed totally out of character for a printing and design company to not have and refuse to offer print-ready photos of their operations for publicity.

[darkmatter]

To all those who ordered. Decks will start shipping Friday.

Thanks,
~ Mat

[sprouts1115]

darkmatter -  Love the bones.  It's neat how you can take an overly used theme like bones and make it work.

No suit indicator for the courts - The card need to be identifiable at a distance. 
A border around the indices   
The index suit is not the same size as the rank of the card - Especially bad, if you don't have a suit indicator. 
The index suit is on the right  - Less cards in your hand   
images on the cut border - A marked deck   

You broke almost every rule.  It's a good art deck, but I have to say this is no playable deck.  Far from it.  Do you want people to use your cards?  If not, that is ok.  It can be collectable.

[darkmatter]

darkmatter -  Love the bones.  It's neat how you can take an overly used theme like bones and make it work.

No suit indicator for the courts - The card need to be identifiable at a distance.
A border around the indices
The index suit is not the same size as the rank of the card - Especially bad, if you don't have a suit indicator.
The index suit is on the right  - Less cards in your hand
images on the cut border - A marked deck

You broke almost every rule.  It's a good art deck, but I have to say this is no playable deck.  Far from it.  Do you want people to use your cards?  If not, that is ok.  It can be collectable.

I want people to do whatever they choose with this deck. I was well aware I was breaking the fundamentals of card design while creating it and I just made the choice - form over function.

My next deck (already in the works) is quite playable I assure you.

~ Mat

[Justin O.]

I want people to do whatever they choose with this deck. I was well aware I was breaking the fundamentals of card design while creating it and I just made the choice - form over function.

My next deck (already in the works) is quite playable I assure you.
~ Mat

This isn't form over function , it's different for the sake of being different, sacrificing good design.

Setting card design aside for a moment and just focusing on the fundamentals of good graphic design, you are eschewing basic design elements just to be different and disrupting any cohesivity the project has.
There isn't anything that says you can't do it, and the artwork has enough merit to carry it, but some of the designs look bad in context of their neighbors, and even a layman would know something was wrong with the design on a fundamental level even if they didn't have the ability to point out what.
You broke the form you clearly, badly, wanted to create since there is no function and the whole thing doesn't work.

You are an amazing artist though, so I'm in!

[sprouts1115]

darkmatter - Jumped in for 2 decks.  One to open and one to save.  What was your print run? 100 decks? Do you have a Facebook page? 

2nd look.  This is a good art deck.  You have broke every damn rule and made it work. 

#6 Every card needs a suit - The diamonds don't have a suit.  Brings up a good point.  He could have gotten rid of the club and just had black for the index. Black and no suit = Clubs   

#7 The indices must be in the same spot and line up.  Opps! 

#8 Roman numerals for the rank index on the pips - That is Tarot card stuff.  You are crazy