Hey everyone. I've been working on this for a couple weeks, and I'm interested to get some feedback. At the moment what I have is a card back, but the faces are coming next.
The goal of this project is to create cards for special occasions, like weddings and anniversaries, that people would actually want to play with. Too often you see gimmicky cards with photos or hearts splashed everywhere, cards you wouldn't want to be seen with. I'm aiming for a classy, timeless feel - the kind you buy two of so you'll still have a set when they wear out.
The design is rather attractive. There are two things I want to point out for you, though - not necessarily negatives, but things to factor in when considering what changes if any to make to your design.
First, the design is a one-way back - you can clearly tell the card's orientation based on the back design. For collectible cards, they generally don't sell as well as two-way designs do. Poker players in general steer clear of one-way backs because by using a simple sorting method, a dishonest player could orient the cards in a way that tells him or her which are the high-value cards and which aren't. It's not necessarily the kiss of death - just something to keep in mind.
Second, the design would be printed into the bleed. Lots of card designs do this - it gives the card backs a rather distinctive look, especially when compared with your typical bordered back. It does, however, have a drawback when it comes to longevity. When playing cards are handled, shuffled, thrown across the room, etc., eventually the surface of the card will start to chip, exposing some of the white paper underneath. For a white-bordered card, this is a non-issue - it's white on white, barely noticeable and only if you look hard. For a card with a solid, dark color that prints into the bleed, the chipping becomes noticeable rather quickly, after only a small amount of handling. The cards will start looking fairly shabby in very little time with use. Magicians will sometimes avoid designs like this as well, generally when there's a dark color on one side and white or a light color on the other - certain magic tricks require that a card that's been flipped be concealed in the center of the deck somewhere, and with your design, this would leave a telltale line running around the deck's edge showing exactly where the hidden card is. It's because for the rest of the deck, it's an alternating pattern of a white face with a dark face, but for that one card, its white face is against a white face and its dark face is against a dark face, leaving the pattern of light (L) and dark (D) like this from top to bottom (going left to right in this example, and notice the bold red letters):
top of deck > DLDL...DLD
LLDDLDL...DLDL < bottom of deck.
There are ways to counter this edge issue with only small alterations to the design. The simplest way would be to reduce the size of the design by a small percentage and give it a normal white border - it works, though it's not as attractive, especially to some collectors. Some designers push for a more narrow border, which has a very attractive look, but depending on who's doing the printing and die cutting, there's a greater chance that a slightly off-center card will leave you with uneven borders that are glaringly obvious. Another option would be to use a "Stinger"-style border, like the Bee Stinger playing cards used by some casinos - a short distance from the edge of the card, the pattern fades to white, leaving no hard borderline. I've also seen designs where the pattern is faded to a lighter color - for example, a black back that fades to light gray at the edge. Lighter colors will conceal edge chipping better - the lighter the color, the better the concealment.
Have you given any thought as to who will be doing the printing and what price point you'd be looking to set? You have to be market-sensitive on this one - to most people, playing cards are playing cards; a fancy designer deck is no different to them than the pack of Bicycles at the drug store or the pack of cheapo cards from the dollar store. You'd need to compete on price if you wanted to make a wedding or anniversary deck for the mass market, which would rule out a lot of quality printers doing the work for you. You could focus on collectors, but then you're looking for a niche market inside of a niche market - collectors are a tiny fraction of the overall playing card market, and the number of them eager to celebrate an anniversary or wedding with a pack of cards is smaller still. The most successful Kickstarter deck projects always succeed by having a healthy percentage of non-collectors in the mix, often a majority, in terms of number of backers - collectors only have an edge when it comes to purchasing power in the market, because while some collectors will buy a few dozen decks a month or more, the average USPC customer buys about one deck every eighteen months (some buy more, obviously, like typical paper-deck poker players, but others will have the same old deck in the kitchen drawer lying around for years before replacing it - again, to them, cards are cards; new or worn, doesn't matter).
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