How to Create Your Own Deck of Playing Cards: A Guide to Publishing Your Own Custom Deck

This sub-forum (The Card Studio) is all about creating your own deck, and intended for serious discussions on playing card design, crowd funding, printing sources, marketing, etc.

So how do you go about that? The good news is that current technology means that the resources to make your own deck of custom playing cards are well within reach. There was a time where the only channels for producing a custom deck of playing cards required you to used a major playing card manufacturer, and be a successful artist or designer with that was lucky enough to get a contract with a big publisher. But today it's a brand new world, and if you are a hobbyist playing card designer, you now have the ability to turn your personal design into a printed product with the help of technology and the internet.

What this means is that if you have the right software and artistic skills, you can design something impressive on your home computer. And you don't even need to spend enormous sums of money, because powerful graphics programs are readily available for little or no cost, which you can use to create innovative designs. It's also not difficult to find printers that will produce your playing cards for you. You can even try to harness the power of crowdfunding to get the financial backing needed for a larger print-run, and get your deck into the hands of other playing card enthusiasts. Who knows, your creation may even go viral and prove to be an online hit.

But what are the key elements that are part of the process of creating your own deck of playing cards, and what should you know? I've written an article that gives an overview of all the essential steps that are part of this process. There are five main areas that you need to think about:
● Concept
● Artwork
● Funding
● Production
● Fulfillment

If you're interested in learning more, you'll find my complete article here:

https://playingcarddecks.com/blogs/all-i......ng-cards

Great article, thanks!

If you're looking to print a custom deck in low numbers, or to get good quality prototypes, a lot of people already know about MakePlayingCards, which is based in China. But more people need to know about Shuffled Ink, which offers a product at least as good, also with no minimum order quantity, and which is based in the US.

I've written a detailed review of my experience in printing a custom deck with Shuffled Ink, which was very positive.

Wow! Great article! Thanks for sharing! I can not wait to take a deep dive into this. Great suggestion on the alternative Shuffled Ink; did not know about them.

Glad to help making others aware of good resources like them!

Ever since I saw John Bannon's custom jumbo cards he used for "Power of Poker" on Move Zero Volume 4, I've been searching for the "bespoke" card manufacturer in Taiwan that he mentioned -- but to no avail. I was aware of MPC but I am loathe to deal with mainland China. Thanks for the heads up on shuffled ink.

As of this moment I tried to design a deck using their web interface. It was unreliable for me. I could add a custom back, but "save and continue" does not advance to step 3 of the design process. Just stuck on the "Design Your Card Backs." I'll need to contact them. (BTW, I tried the web interface in Chrome and Firefox, both behaved the same).

Phil

Try phoning Shuffled Ink directly.

To my knowledge, their phone support (especially for US based customers) is good.

There's a phone number for customer support towards the bottom of their About page: https://shuffledink.com/about/

Thanks. Will do.

Great info. Appreciated!

Great article, thank you very much!

I've been meaning to do this for a long time, thanks for the info.