We have to screen print a deck of cards as our final project for screen printing. Originally I was thinking tarot cards, and Jeremy suggested a typography theme. I played with the idea for awhile, but I kept hitting my head against the wall. I normally avoid working with my assignments head on; I try to find a weird, “out of the box” sort of approach, which turns out gimmicky at times, I think. For example, I had to execute a letter-sized magazine ad for intro vcd, and I ended up with an odd fold-out and a die-cut for jetBlue. My cd project had transparent overlays.

So I’m doing a straight up poker deck, 52 cards + 2 jokers. Hands are the theme, though I’m currently deciding between making the shapes of the actual numbers or just holding up fingers for cards 1-10. I’m leaning towards the former since that looks more interesting, but it’s kind of a pain to figure out how to position and contort my hands. Also, the photography’s all Photo Booth—it’s really hard to take pictures of my own hands!

Right now I’m kinda hanging on how to do the spot colors on the backs of the cards. I’ll probably ask my instructor tomorrow on how to break it up. I think it’ll look really cool if I can pull it off.

(My sister also calls this my “gang sign” project.)