Revealed: Non-Court Card Design for UnCommon Beat’s The Black Book of Cards

Coming to Kickstarter soon, Uncommon Beat has been meticulously designing and releasing images of their upcoming playing card project The Black Book of Cards. Here is a news release they issued today regarding the design on the non-court cards in that project.

From Uncommon Beat (6/27/2013):

We’ve been working diligently on the non-court cards and wanted to share what we have created. Since all cards are designed by building each line of text to create pattern and to portray the illusion of form, this is a very intense process. As you saw in our last update, the court cards are meticulously created portraits using type to form the court faces delivering an almost 3D effect without the use of shading. Our distinctive process turned out to work better than expected and really makes the faces feel life-like and almost tangible.

We wanted the non-court cards to be just as important and design focused as the court cards therefore we treated each card as its own piece of artwork within the Black Book. In many decks of cards, the court cards carry the main weight of the design and while the non-court cards may be customized, they may not be as design focused as the court cards. We didn’t want that to be the case for The Black Book of Cards so we set out to create a unique design on each card utilizing the negative space to create the actual silhouette of the pips instead of just creating a unique design for each pip that sit on a blank canvas. Each card within the Black Book holds its own by possessing a unique and time-intensive typographic design portraying a different look, feeling, and presence.

We’ve completed the first stage of the design development for the non-court cards and would like to share them with you. While the text on the cards will change to reveal the words that describe those who hold each card based on the day they were born; the overall design, pattern, and text placement will remain unchanged. We’ve already received fantastic feedback on the cards and hope you enjoy each one as much as we do! 

Here is a look at the non-court cards: