Crafting Additional Playing Card Suits

It isn’t much of a secret that I am fascinated by the idea of playing card suits. In fact, I’ve previously written an article on the subject. During my research into alternative suits (aside from the French hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs, that is) I became so fascinated with the idea that I created my own set of four additional suits (being represented in a 104-card deck) which were revealed at the end of the aforementioned article. In the time since then, I have become less satisfied with these designs and more capable in my own design skills, which led me to attempt this project again.
The first thing I did was go back to my research, collecting again every attempt at a different set of suits that I had previously looked at. Then I reviewed as much additional information as I could (several comments on my previous post led me down interesting paths, and with the constant exponential increase in data on the internet, there were a myriad of options that had either been created or come to light since my previous search. Links to as many of these as possible will be provided at the end*). I then created a master document where I cut out all of the various suits I had found and aligned them with all the others for comparison purposes (I also found that, strangely, some designs seem to have been “lifted” from elsewhere, which surprises me, one would think there wouldn’t be money in doing such a thing). I then reviewed the reasons that people had listed for creating each of these additional suits (at least, those that weren’t regional variations from centuries past) and found James Robert Watson’s methodology to be what I would consider the most sound (and his designs, in my opinion, the most successful). I reviewed the elements of the standard French design for the features that made them a cohesive set, and their symbolism. I then attempted to create as many different possible shapes that utilized these features and could be made to symbolize something easily recognizable (and, if possible, similar to those of the regional Spanish, German, or Italian suits).
One of the things that I noted when reviewing the myriad of ways others had attempted this challenge was that the symbols were often either too complicated or attempting to signify something more complicated than the 4 shapes they were meant to harmonize with. Indeed, looking at the 4 suits they don’t have that much in common aside from the “obvious” derivation of the spades and hearts. Perhaps a part of their cohesiveness is familiarity. I don’t have many symbols paired together in my life the way card suits are, but there is something pleasing about the 4 of them arranged in the abstract, even though they range in complexity from two lines to six, and don’t use lines that behave in consistent manners. Upon studying these details, I laid out several rules for myself in constructing my additional suits:
  • A symbol must be made of either straight lines or simple curves.
  • A symbol must be horizontally symmetrical.
  • It is okay and, at times, preferable to have a symbol be derivative of another symbol.
  • All symbols must be easily differentiable at a glance without color being a factor.
  • A symbol may not exceed 7 lines (clubs, the previous highest, have 6).
  • A symbol must have characteristics such that it can be paired with at least one other suit and fit into a group of 4 suits.
  • A symbol must be passably recognizable as what it is attempting to symbolize.
  • A symbol must feel as if it fits with the others.
Admittedly, the last one is a bit subjective. However, during this run, cohesiveness in design was central to what I wanted to achieve. My previous attempt looked like everyone else’s, so I wanted to make something that was my own, that fit. I sketched a series of designs starting with my previous attempt and working in some of what I have found in my research. I determined that in order to visually fit in, the designs had to represent items that could be considered “timeless”. Modern mechanisms just wouldn’t fit in, and there was a reason things like flowers or swords had been chosen as suits in the past (though often not as stylized). Beyond those conscious decisions it is difficult to explain how an iterative process creates, so I will simply display the result, laid out in a way that I believe makes its connections to the source material apparent.
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More Shapes in Playing Cards

Despite me having thousands (probably) of decks of playing cards there is one property they have with very little variance, and that is their rectangularness. Almost every deck of cards ever printed is rectangular, even though you’d think that with modern printing we’d just be making them in every conceivable shape. I’ve still got my hands on a few oddly shaped decks, though, and as I go through them, I think you’ll see that despite them being fascinating, there is a reason we keep the old rectangular design most of the time. (Of course it’s because they’re easier to print, hold, shuffle, and store. You already knew that, but more shapes are fun.)

Of course circular is the most popular, and the one I have the most examples of at 6. It’s the shape that is the most different from the standard rectangle, while still potentially being playable. Most sets use a simple pattern, where the illustration is in the center surrounded by 6 pips around the edge. It’s about as good a design as one could come up with for the shape, but it isn’t particularly easy to hold, both in general and in a way that allows one to see the pips. But on the table they look super cool, and they allow for strange back designs that make them “loved” by novelty toy companies that make things in China. My favorite’s the one with the world on the back, but the oldest one (by Waddingtons) with pink elephants is pretty neat too.

The third most common shape I’ve seen is surprising, but likely the most functional behind the standard. They are made by Umbra, a furniture and home décor company that apparently had some leftover cardboard (I joke, but a surprising number of décor and furniture companies have branded cards) and they’re five inch long, inch and a half wide oblong “capsules” (they have straight sides). This large shape and the ungainly rounded plastic containers they come in make them hard to store and cumbersome to take with you, but the minimalistic design with two pips and a line down the middle allow them to be easily understandable and the tall format with rounded bottoms makes them easy to fan out even while holding large hands. They might not be my first choice but maybe they’re an okay pack for vacations.

And now it’s time for the weird; if you want to be reminded of the wonderful days of summer when you’re dealing a hand there’re flip-flop shaped cards (mine are from Two’s Company, and not the ones currently available online) that are far too big but easy to fan out in your hand since the pips are printed on a part that curves away from the rest of the card. They also strangely have 3 different back designs randomly distributed throughout the cards because they couldn’t be bothered to make decisions with a straight head. And speaking of that there’s the “crooked pack” which introduces two angles into the middle of the cards in what I assume is an attempt to make them easier to fan, but has the side effect of making them impossible to shuffle, and that isn’t helped by the poor quality of their construction. Still, they are probably the most playable deck I’ve mentioned and for that reason they are actually still available (though mine say made in Hong Kong so they might not be exactly the same).

And since Chinese manufacturers tend to not ask questions, there are a ton from there, most coming in cheap clear plastic cases that match the cards’ shape, and the card quality is low enough that they begin to fall apart after a few plays. I’ve got a guitar pick deck that has the pips printed in such a way that you can only play with the deck in one direction (which seems to be upside down) and not very comfortably at that. Then there’s a deck shaped like a football, which literally just has regular playing card faces printed small enough that they fit inside the shape and thus are almost unplayable because there’s no way to hold more that a few and see the values on the card. And I have a heart deck that looks just as bad despite trying to compensate for the new shape.

But the absolutely worst shaped deck I have ever encountered is a little one shaped like a racecar, complete with an east-to-tear triangle for the spoiler. The deck is a master-class in not thinking: the design is too complicated to hold, shuffle, or easily put back in the case. The cardstock used is flimsy and easily tear-able, while the coating makes them slippery when being held. The pips are placed where they are hard to see while fanning the cards, and they are black numbers surrounded by a black circle (yes, all four 9s have the same pips, same for the 8s, etc.), and to make things just that little bit more confusing, they even changed out the regular suits for: helmets, trophies, flags, and wheels. They’re just a disaster, but you can still buy them at party-favor websites if you don’t want anyone at your party to have fun playing cards.

(Now, before the last paragraph here, I’d like to briefly mention a deck that had me fooled. Even though I had previously seen what was inside I still thought that the “Archideck” was a set of different shaped cards because of its “building” -shaped box, but alas, they just have boring pictures of New York buildings on them, and shame on me for being fooled.)

So is there a lesson to be learned from all that? Yes, I think: if you want to play a game, maybe just stick to regular cards, but other shapes are fun to look at and to mess with. If there is a better shape than the rectangle I haven’t found it yet, and I’m starting to think there probably isn’t and we got it right the first time. But, of course I do enjoy all these experimental decks, and getting one out to use every once in a while is still a fun thing to do.

More Suits in Playing Cards

I have a large playing card collection; I love decks of cards. I’m not entirely sure why I like them so much, but I do. And I’ve ended up with hundreds upon hundreds of decks of cards via my collecting. It was only a matter of time before I came upon one of the many more unique decks of cards out there.

Most of us know the classic French deck as the one we use all of the time, with four suits that don’t make a whole lot of sense, 13 cards per suit, and two jokers (that are in no way related to the fool from Tarot). This deck is accepted by many in the United States and abroad as the standard deck. And it is so popular that it is easily the standard of the world. But variations are fun, and while the suits and number of cards in each suit change over several European countries (Germany, Austria, Italy, and Spain all have different styles), for some people that isn’t enough.

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Some people question why we only have four suits with games like bridge, which can handle more suits (so I’m told, I can’t actually play bridge, but I think we’ve all played a game where suit doesn’t really matter). One of the earliest (and one of the only) decks that I found that realized this was the vintage Sextet Bridge deck that I picked up from a garage sale. The new suits of wheels (ship wheels) and racquets (as in tennis), while interesting, are only that. The design of the pips are far too complicated and modern to really fit the motif of a deck of cards, but are still fun nonetheless.

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After seeing these, I became fascinated by decks that added more suits to the standards bunch. The most common of these are the Star-Deck and various other decks that include stars as a fifth suit, like the game Five Crowns. The star works as an addition, but it’s a bit bland, and including it smudges the overall design appearance that is so refined, in my opinion.

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While five suited decks were fun, and so were decks with non-traditional suits, I wanted more. How many suits could one fit in a deck and still have it be useful? I started looking at other six-suited decks. The Blue Sea deck, which is available from print on demand services, does this, but again I think the new suits don’t quite fit the older deck. The Empire deck of cards with anchors and crowns makes a really good and nicely fitting deck, but I think better could be done. And that’s when I found a blog post from a graphic designer (New Link) online about this very topic in which he presented his own two new suits designed specifically to blend in with the existing decks (the symbol for every suit can be made with fewer than 7 lines). These two new suits are wonderful and I believe they are the best-designed additions to a normal deck of cards that exist. I just wish there was a deck using them (Edit: It appears there is now a deck featuring these cards).

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But I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted more suits, not for any reason, really (some people want to play Cripple Mr. Onion). I just wanted to see if companies could consistently design a counterpart, or set of counterparts, to the modern French deck. The answer to that for me was unfortunately no. While the Fat Pack playing cards, and 8 Suit playing cards are far from terrible (the green Eagle as a fifth suit was terrible*) they do fail at being what I wanted, which is a simple and consistent addition to the French suits. The makers of these decks read more into the patterns of what the shapes represent rather than the patterns of the shapes themselves. Still, I was going to obtain several decks and play with them (in what game? Well I’d have to invent one, or play Cripple Mr. Onion).

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I never did end up buying either of those decks, and after getting back into collecting strange decks after buying them some odd ones at Garage Sales and thrift stores (including Five Crowns) I went on the same journey of finding photos of each of the differently suited decks I’ve talked about. I was less satisfied this time than I was originally, and decided that I would make my own. I’m far from the greatest designer in the world, but I stuck with several of the principles that were used in the creation of the six-suited cards, and several of my own, like the simple line numbers. I decided that adding new red and black cards seemed like it would be problematic so I decided the cards would be in two new differently colored pairs (then each one would be individually colored, which was prompted by me looking at 4-colored, 4-suited decks).

Possible new card suits variation 4

Right to Left Top to Bottom: Spades, Hearts, Wheels, Towers, Diamonds, Clovers (Clubs), Globes, and Sheilds

 

What I came up with was this Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, Clovers, Wheels, Shields, Globes, and Towers. Each is paired off the by similarity in the bottom half, hearts and diamonds being pointy, shields and wheels being round etc. I made these cards into a 104-card deck (with the other alteration of using a P for Prince/Princess instead of a J for Jack) and had them printed at a print-on-demand service. While they aren’t amazing, I think with refinement and a better quality printing they will turn out great.

prince(slash)princess of shields

I’ve created several games to play with them, and if they are a hit with my friends (we generally play more complex games at game-night so maybe this could spice cards up enough to get it back into the front for a while) I will hopefully make more. And I don’t think that I’m finished even with the concept of my new suits. I’m sure they will change, as they need to change, and as playing cards changed when they needed to change over centuries of use.

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