Designing Your Playing Cards: Tips And Tricks

Have you ever thought of designing your playing cards? Maybe you’re planning a costume event, want to make a game for your friends, or want to show off in front of family and friends by doing card tricks. 

Whatever the case, it is not that hard! This article will guide you through designing your customized playing cards. This article will include how to design custom playing cards and different styles and types of playing card decks.

What Do You Need To Prepare?

There are several things that you’re going to need:

• A printer (either inkjet or laser will do, but laser is recommended)
• A color printer is preferred. If you only have a black and white printer, you will need to print them on colored paper. The colors of your playing cards will not be as vivid when printed on black and white paper.
• Card stock paper that the printer can use. It must be thicker than normal copy paper.
• A pencil and ruler.
• A suitable graphic program (Photoshop, Gimp, etc.)
• Decks of standard playing cards (for reference)

How To Design Playing Cards: Step By Step

Step One: Getting Started

Before designing your cards, you should familiarize yourself with the card layout. This will help you when creating the background and card elements. The standard layout consists of different areas of information on both sides of the card.

Step Two: Layout and Background

The first thing you’ll do is design your card’s layout. You can either use a graphic program or pencil and paper for this. One of the advantages of using a graphic program is that artwork can be automatically scaled depending on how many cards you want to be printed.

You should use a template when designing your card layout. This will make it easier for you to layout and design the elements of your card. A template will have a place for each vital part of the card, such as the area where the suit will be printed, the name of the card, and a place at the bottom where you can put your copyright information.

When designing your card layout, you should ensure enough space between all elements on your cards. Too little space can cause areas to overlap or won’t leave enough room for essential details. Too much space is just as bad. Make sure that the name of the card and suit are on the correct layer and that no element is on top of another element.

Card Design Tip: If you get it wrong with your photos, you can always make some corrections using a graphic program. This can be very helpful if you mess up your layout. However, be sure to make any changes so that they are visible to your printer before printing the cards, or you will have to start again.

Step Three: Layout and Card Elements

You want to design the background of your playing cards first. The background of your card is where the information on the sides and center of the card will be printed. To do this, you will need to get familiar with the shape and layout of a standard playing card. The only difference between a standard deck of cards and a custom deck is that you can use any image as your background.

Wrapping Up

That’s it! Once you’ve followed the steps above and you have access to all of your images, you can start printing, cutting, and assembling your cards. Have fun designing your own set of custom playing cards!