Designing the Ace of Clubs inspired by Neri Oxman
Course: Interactive and Digital Tools
Professor: Maria Esteban Casañas
This project challenged students to design an individual playing card from a deck of cards inspired by a designer, architect, or a design/architecture movement. I chose Neri Oxman as inspiration due to her contributions towards design, architecture, biology, and material sciences. I was given the Ace of Clubs from the a typical deck of cards as a starting point.
To narrow down focus on this project and make advancements, I decided to focus on one of Neri Oxman’s projects. The project I chose was Vespers III (linked here).
Ideation
Initial Ideation
While using Neri Oxman’s Vespers III as inspiration, I wanted to find my own replacement of Oxman’s microorganisms that release their own pigment.
Due to the time frame of this project (4 weeks), conducting science experiments, without guaranteed results, what not feasible for this project. Although I was not able to experiments similar to Oxman, I wanted to perform physical actions on this project was important. Doing physical work for a card that was eventually going to be submitted and worked on digitally was important due to both Oxman’s work being hands-on and physical as well as my personal desire to challenge the status quo.
Traditionally, playing cards are printed and mass-produced goods. With the concept of print, in the modern context, people will likely think about newspapers, books, booklets, and posters, which for the most part all revolve around graphic design. The timeline of a process of producing a playing card in keeping with the previously mentioned printed methods usually have a process of a sketch/flat plan, design process digitally, and finally the printing process. But, this was a plan that did not connect with me but with many others so I wanted to challenge the traditional process of designing a playing card. So, I decided to have a plan for a rough layout, physical interaction and design, transfer to digital, and then printing.
Layout Plan
Going Physical
To go physical, I incorporated physical material that I had on hand to implement onto a deck of cards. In my case, it was charcoal tablets, which needed to be crushed (video) on left and paint.
Card Interactions
To incorporate charcoal and paint, I covered my fingers in paint and covered each card with paint according to my rough guide. Afterwards, the previously crushed charcoal was drizzled over top the wet paint. Finally, whichever crushed charcoal stuck to the paint would be integrated into the deck of cards for future processes in this project.
Results
As shown below, the combination of paint and crushed charcoal worked for the idea of getting distinct visuals on each individual card.
Tracing Cards in Adobe Illustrator
Result of all 48 cards traced
Logo Design
How was it designed?
Continued Inspiration from Neri Oxman
Oxman previously worked at the Mediated Matter Lab within MIT’s Media Lab prior to starting Oxman. So, I looked to at the logos of the Mediated Matter Lab and the MIT Media Lab.
A 7x7 block grid
MIT Media Lab over grid
MIT Media Lab’s Logo
Logo’s of labs within the MIT Media Lab. The Mediated Matter Lab is shwon on the 4th column, 3rd from the top.
What do all the logos have in common?
Mediated Matter Lab over grid
Implementing the Ace of Clubs into the grid
Final Card
Incorporating the results of all the tracing of charcoal on paint from all 48 cards with the logo and additional text about Neri Oxman, 2018 referencing the year Vespers III was published, and my name, the card was finished.
