Typography Response: King of Hearts and Queen of Clubs

In lesson with Mr Cousland we were given a task. Our task was to create our own design for a playing card (King of Hearts, Queen of Clubs, Jack of Spades, etc) using only typography. At first, I was a bit uncomfortable with this task as I had no idea how I could possibly complete this task. I started by looking at photos of playing cards and breaking them down by looking at all the small details. Each King/Queen/Jack of a sui
t are quite different from each other, which I had never noticed before because I had never looked at them closely enough. For example, the Queen of Clubs is holding a flower in her h
and, but the Queen of Spades is holding a flower and a spear in the opposite hand.

The cards that I chose to respond to were the King of Hearts and the Queen of Clubs. I choose these cards because they were both different and I would gain more experience by doing two very different designs.

Sketch Queen design

Illustrator Queen design



Illustrator King design

Sketch King design

I created my designs by looking carefully at the certain details and aspects of the playing cards. I described what I could visually see and then I used the main words to create my piece. For the King of Hearts, I used less words than I used with the Queen of Clubs. The King was a more simple design compared to the Queen. With the Queen, there is a lot more detail added using typography. It outlines the details of her face, whereas with the King, I used typography to fill the silhouette of the King.

I experimented with colour with the King design as it is the King of Hearts, so I used the colours red and black - the main colours on the King of Hearts card. With the Queen of Clubs I just used black as it is the only main colour used on the original cards.

I think that the Queen of Clubs was the most successful as it is a lot more detailed, but still simple, which is a great combination. I think that this task was very creative and got me to think of new ways that I could design using only typography.