7 Questions with Dimitri Arleri of Cardistry Touch

One of the most anticipated cardistry deck this year, the ORIGIN Cardistry deck by Cardistry Touch is the first deck crafted from scratch specifically for cardistry. The deck features a unique geometric design that accentuates spins, flourishes, and large, multi-card displays. Also, a single design is repeated on each card for an enhanced cardistry experience.

Printed by Cartumundi on a premium quality paper with a softer stock and coated in brand new "cardistry finish", which feels broken in right out of the box. All 51 cards are housed in a very unique swivel box.

We caught up with Dimitri Arleri and had a quick chat about Cardistry Touch, the inspiration and idea behind the ORIGIN deck, and his thoughts about the support from the cardistry community.

First off, for anyone who might not be familiar, tell us about yourselves and Cardistry Touch. How did you guys end up collaborating together?
I was doing cardistry for a few years already when I decided to move from Paris to Brussels for my studies: I ended up going to the same school as Ladislas, which was a total coincidence. We quickly became friends and shared this amazing passion. We then realized that we also shared a certain vision of cardistry, we were both reaching for the same goals, and we had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted the future of cardistry to look like. We also knew that, even though we were still students back then, cardistry had to be a part of our professional lives. I remember long conversations, discussing how we could improve ourselves by improving the whole community. Tons of ideas about what we could accomplish and what we could change if we put our minds and skills together. Inevitably, all those ideas had to be done under one entity, and that’s why we created “Touch”.

You guys are amazing cardists! What motivated you to create your own deck of cards?
Thanks! The motivation was really basic: we felt like something was missing, so we decided to create it. We didn’t really have an object that was 100% ours as cardists. We used playing cards, but those were made to play games, not to manipulate. We cannot deny that traditional playing cards are a great tool for our art, but we knew we could do better. So we started to rethink everything from the ground up. Not only the design, but the paper, the weight, the size, the number of cards… everything: we wanted to create a new object. We had no idea how to do it yet, but we knew that if we were going to create that new object, we couldn’t compromise on anything. We also knew that most playing card manufacturer would never take the time to create a new deck from scratch. Still, we kept brainstorming for years about this project, without even knowing if it could be possible one day.

We noticed that you will be printing the Origin deck with Cartamundi. How did you end up collaborating together?
Well, like I said, we already had the whole project figured out before we even had a supplier, and we wouldn’t settle for anything less than what we had in mind. We were in luck when Cartamundi contacted Ladislas out of nowhere to collaborate on a deck of cards. We immediately pitched our project, and a few days later, we started working together. It was pretty amazing to see such a huge company taking the time to work with us two and our crazy idea. They believed in our project, and they actually took action. We didn’t think it would take that long though. I think both Cartamundi and us didn’t realize how ambitious this project was: for two years, we worked back and forth, rethinking everything from scratch, to create a real cardistry deck that would fit our needs. And we finally did :-)

What is your inspiration behind the Origin deck? And that awesome tuck box, how did you guys come up with the idea?
When we designed the deck, we had two things in mind: practicality and aesthetics. It had to be a “cardistry” oriented design, so that really defined the main feature of the design: all cards had to be the same, and had to work together. Rhythms and connections for fans, two colorways, thin borders on one side for cuts, a spinning effect in the center, and so on. But we also wanted one single card to be a piece of art itself. We both had a design-oriented education, so we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted the final product to look like, so after months of work, we finally agreed on this design and we’re super proud of it!

We also wanted to do something different for the tuck box. We didn’t have a clear idea, but we wanted something new, just like our deck: something that would push the possibilities of cardistry. We had a few meetings about it with the Cartamundi designer team to discuss it and explain what we had in mind, and after a few back and forth, they came up with this great mechanism: the swivel box, Simple and effective. We tweaked it a little too perfectly fit our needs, that’s it, we had the cards, we had the box, and we were good to go.



After Cardistry-Con Berlin, the Origin deck is one of the most sought-after Cardistry deck. What do you think of the cardistry community in terms of the response, feedback and support that you’ve been getting so far?
The response that we had at cardistry-con was incredible. Before that, people were already saying great things about the design, and that was great, but like I said, the design is only a small part of the project. We’ve been working on this “cardistry finish” for more than two years, so we were really stressed out when we release the Cardistry-Con edition. It turned out great though; we had a lot of amazing feedbacks from cardists all over the world. We really can’t wait for everyone to try out the final product!

What’s next? Can we expect to see more card designs in the future?
Of course! We already have some good ideas for future designs, very different from Origin. This is only the beginning, with Cartamundi we also want to keep pushing the quality of our decks: we will constantly make our product evolve with the feedbacks of our customers. The cards aren’t the only thing we’ll do, by the way, we’re a cardistry brand and we have many projects in our mind and in the works already. We want to make more apps like MyShuffles, more collaboration with other artists, tutorials, and many other stuff we can’t talk about right now :P

Finally, what are your favorite playing card decks?
Origin of course! I might be biased on this one…

Thank you for your time, Dimitri, and congratulations on an incredible product!