VIZAĜO – A Creative Roadmap
The journey from first idea to a finished deck of playing cards takes many winding turns and side-tracks. Here you can follow some of the stages involved in creating this colourful deck of cards, from sketches to launch, including tools and materials, along with statistics (not that I’m a numbers person, though I thought it was fun to keep track of a few oddities along the way) and… a little background about the journey before creating this deck and what inspires me.
Creating a deck of cards
The bright faces portrayed across VIZAĜO cards have a visual connection to teapots mugs and bows I used to make from clay. While they are by no means the ‘same’, there is an obvious familiarity and continuation of the story, where whimsical faces make the transition from clay to this deck of cards. Imagination and countless hours of drawing and painting have given the characters royal flair and refinement.
The artwork style is influenced by traditional line-drawing & wood-cut techniques with bold lines and segmented planes of colour.
From idea to finished design
Drawing 54 cards (including jokers) is a labour of love involving countless hours. Pencils, ink pens, & plenty of paper, along with my trusted drawing tablet have all been part of bringing the characters to life.
Connected through colour
I chose a different colour palette for each suit in VIZAĜO to emphasise the symbolic difference between the suits: Hearts – love and emotion, Clubs – inspiration and fire, Diamonds – prosperity and earth, Spades – wisdom and air.
Colours shared and accentuated between the different suits allows your eye to move across the cards and visually connect the deck as a whole.
While both colour versions – Lumina ( red) and Lumino (blue) – have identical faces, a creative play on light and dark allows the card back and box design for each version to shine.
