I am really letting my geek flag fly with this project. I am a huge fan of the author Brandon Sanderson. This deck is inspired by his Stormlight Archive series.
In the story, there is a style of communication that uses glyphs. These glyphs can be reshaped pretty much however you want them to be and are often, in the story, shaped to indicate the service or shop or what have you. For example, a sign outside a bookseller would have their name styled in the shape of a book. Someone of the high nobility would have his name broken into two glyphs and shaped into a glyph pair unique to him. The artist who created them, Isaac Stewart, provided a way of "translating" them in the third book, Oathbringer.
Another important factor in creating these glyphs is that they are symmetrical, and the word is basically in there twice; once on the right and mirrored on the left. So while technically, when you see the pip on the Ace of Spades, it says "edaps spade," the whole image is recognized as "spade."
When designing a deck of cards, I start with the pips. When using these glyphs, it's all a matter of shortening a line here, or curving a line there, all so that it eventually fits into the shape you want. I decided to break with traditional playing card custom and have all of the Aces pips be the same size. This is so that the details on each suit pip can be easily seen.
The face cards gave me another chance to create some glyphs. What I did here is take the names of the cards (Jack, Queen, King), turn them into glyphs shaped like crowns, and then duplicate them radially. When I just mirrored them from top to bottom, they lost the look of a crown. By creating a box, I was able to incorporate the pips of their suits inside of the box and continue the radial theme.
The Jokers were also fun to create. I tried to recreate the look of a floppy jester-esque hat. Luckily, the letters worked in my favor. I also flip-flopped the colors on the two cards for a bit of contrast.
Lastly, we come to the card backs. These are symbols that are straight out of the book series. Right in the middle is the double eye of the Almighty. Arranged around that are the ten orders of Knights Radiant in the larger glyphs and the magic system or "surge" they each share between them in the smaller glyphs.
UPDATE: I made a few changes. First, I fixed an error on the back of the cards. There was a duplicated glyph that I didn't catch. Special thanks to u/Halyo_Ales on reddit for finding it! Second, I did a drastic overhaul of the joker card. There is a character called Hoid in Brandon Sanderson's works. He pops up all over the universe, or cosmere. I took all of the names that he is known as and molded them into a glyph, keeping the jester-style hat.
