For the Playing Card project, we had to create a set of three "face" playing card designs in Adobe Illustrator. We had to consider our use of color, patterns, textures, and include symbolic elements. 

I had the idea of using the buildings at SPU as my face card. Alexander and Adelaide Hall was the "King" card because it is the theology building, and felt appropriate considering Christianity is a central part to SPU. Demaray's beauty from the intricate carvings and clock tower designs led me to make it the "Queen". Because McKinley is the theatre building, the "drama" of it led me to make it the "Joker" card.

The most challenging part of the project was coming up with border designs. Demaray Hall's was the most difficult, because my original plan was to copy the clock tower patterns. However, the patterns were too detailed and disrupted the balance and simple look. After going through a few different ideas, I settled on using only the star symbol in the clock tower design.

This project was one of the more time consuming, yet also one of the most fun, projects I worked on in ART 1105. 

Materials used: Sketchbook, pencil

Programs used: Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape 

Inkscape Drafts 

Inkscape is a free vector design program that I used to create my initial drafts of the cards. I have worked in Inkscape and Adobe Illustrator before, and both are very similar to each other. Using Inkscape first helped me familiarize myself with creating with vector images. Plus, I could work on my own personal computer a majority of the time before I had to work on the art building computers. In the end, I only had to spend a few days in the art building transferring my Inkscape work to Illustrator and making the needed adjustments.

Printed Versions

Color Research

In our research, we had to find pre- 1850, non-western world, artwork to pull colors from to create a color palette. While we didn't have to use these color palettes in our cards, I ended up using some colors. The research helped me think about how colors are used to create unity and emphasis. 

Thumbnail Sketches