Deck Development: The Hearts of Hidden Leaves by Mahdi Gilbert

On our new series, Deck Development, we follow the progression of a deck of playing cards starting with the design inspiration to the final product you will hold in your hands. The designer will explain development decisions and may show the development process as well as the result itself.

We are honored to have the incredible and inspirational magician Mahdi Gilbert (@mahdigilbert) with us to step is though his upcoming deck of playing cards, Hidden Leaves. The aim is to blend Japanese and French aesthetics to create the style of this gorgeous deck, which is a spiritual homage to Le Samouraï, the 1967 French masterpiece by Jean-Pierre Melville. According to Mahdi,

This is my first deck of cards and I have been dreaming about creating this deck for years. A deck of cards is very personal for a magician, they are a reflection of his inner world and I wanted to have a deck that tells my audience and the world something about my world.

Mahdi was very inspired by the old style of playing cards and how they were printed over a century ago. Mahdi explains,

Every color was printed on separately and there were natural imperfections and bleeding that occurred because of the printing method. This resulted in every deck being completely unique in very subtle ways. I found that the beauty of the imperfections was something that was very attractive and I knew I wanted my deck to be imperfect so that when people saw them and handled them they could notice the subtle details. 

The images previewed here shows the Heart Court cards. Stay tuned as we continue with deck development and reveal more of the Hidden Leaves Playing Cards. Let us know what you think in our comment section below.