playing cards

Full Suit

Initial Idea

I intended to use colours that are similar to the primary colours for the design, I added shades of violet to clearly show the flower petals for the roses. The colours did not work out too well after test printing and there are too many colours if it is going to work for wood block or lino block printing.

Initial Sketches

These are playing cards that represents people at Sheridan College, this set is specifically for YSDN students, representing them with different kinds of beverages.

Jack is the “Last Minute Worker”, as design students mostly works on their computers and there are different kinds of coffee to keep them alive for the work to be done.

Queen is the “Pretentious” person, tea was used to show this personality because it made me think of the English Queen sipping her tea and enjoying her afternoon. The mouse blends in with the sugar and the cream hinting that the person is also working on design.

King is the “Pub Nighters”, alcohol is used to symbolizes the group of people as clubbing and parties involves a lot of liquor. All kinds of drinks are being mixed into one with a pencil, which is also a tool for designing.

Ace is the ”Messy Worker”, as the person was drawing on the sketchbook he or she spilled her coffee on it leaving a coffee stain that probably would not fade on to her work.

The number card gathers all the beverages with a printing dialogue box that is familiar between all YSDN students, the number inside will change according to the number of the card. As printing is a big part of what we do I liked to include that to remind others about what is it to be like a design student or a designer.

I made the icon a light bulb because a light bulb represents ideas, as designers we are always being creative and we generate a lot of ideas to make the designs work nicely together, for this reason, I think a light bulb could represent the suit. My cards are not rotatable but after switching the numbers and the icon to the same direction, the cards did not look right, so I kept them rotated. I had trouble of thinking about a symbol that represents YSDN students as there are so many things that we use, such as computers, go buses, paint brushes, etc. I decided to represent us using different tools in each suit and using a type of beverage to represent the face we established as a group. To make the pattern contrast with the cards flat graphics, I made the pattern more complicated.

The challenge I had with this project was choosing a colour scheme, as I really like working with a lot of colours, i find it hard to decide on only three, I tried many other combinations and finally chose this peachy colour combination and I am happy with how it turned out.