Remember that graphic designer who created the awesome short animation about The History of Typography we featured before? Well, he is back! Now with another awesome project we all can get involve with. Canadian designer, Ben Barrett-Forrest will be producing a design-friendly deck of playing cards, infusing the essentials of graphic design.
Called “The Design Deck“, the project is a fun and simple way to learn the essentials of graphic design, improve your design skills, and understand more about the design we see and interact with everyday. Each of the 52 cards present a small but useful information about graphic design, from design terminologies and typography tips to design history and famous designer quotes. All sourced from a wide range of graphic design books in the market today.
The project is now successfully funded on Kickstarter, but you can still make a pledge in the remaining 6 days. If you’re starting to learn and explore the design world, this beautiful deck is a must have!
Below are some words from Ben about the project.
I came up with the concept in January 2014 and have been working on it ever since. My main goal for the deck was to have it deliver concise, practical information about graphic design and typography in a way that would be beneficial for experienced designers, but that non-designers could also enjoy and understand.
We are all surrounded by graphic design every day, and I believe that is is a hugely important skill that most people could benefit from knowing more about. But design is strangely underrepresented in most streams of education, and most people know nothing about about it, let alone how to do it themselves. I wanted to defy that convention, and make a graphic design learning tool for the masses.
Being a type nerd, the first decision I made about the design deck was what typefaces to use. The typeface has a huge impact on the overall aesthetic of any design, so I deliberated about my choice for a while. They two fonts I ended up choosing were: DIN Pro, and Adobe Garamond. These are two elegant, subtle fonts that lend themselves well to my design and highlight the content I’m trying to get across. The colours and shapes I chose all harken back to traditional card design, but I arranged them in a modern visual style.
There is a long, fascinating history of playing card design, and I thought it would be an interesting juxtaposition to have classic playing card elements used on my clearly unconventional cards. After coming up with the initial designs, I sought the opinions of many of my friends and fellow designers, took their critiques into consideration, and settled on a final design.
Check out more info about the project here or head over to Ben’s website and Facebook for more of his work.