Hello, I am Leo

[Leo Scherfig]

Hello Everybody!

Thank you very much for accepting me as a new member of the forum, I am very happy to be here.

I have had a great love for playing cards for most of my life, picking up interesting decks whenever I came across any. As a graphic designer for many years, I have often taken inspiration from playing cards — and even designed two decks myself, the first one about twenty years ago, the second a couple of years ago. But not until recently, when I started research for a new deck I'm currently working on, did I know such a huge community exists around the love for playing cards.
It has been almost a revelation for me to discover so many great artists working on art and stories for new customly designed playing card decks, and so many people juggling, throwing, manipulating, playing and collecting those cards. I totally understand why you do it, I just didn't think there would be so many of you (us).

Okay, so earlier this year I stumbled across a couple of new-ish playing card decks, which ignited my desire to know more about the contemporary culture of playing cards — is it a new art-form, that has evolved without me noticing? I knew that sometimes somebody would make and distribute a deck of cards that would maybe promote something, or be ironic of something and so forth, but the decks made by Thirdway or Kings Wild, I could never have imagined. I honestly see this as something comparable to modern dance or installation arts in the ways of telling stories (which is a good thing, I may have to add!).
If this is indeed an art-form, like litterature or ballet, I very much appreciate the lack of linear narrative, that is a given with playing cards that are individual seperatable items, changing neighbours every time they are shuffled. This makes the storytelling more depending on ambience than plot, something I really enjoy.

Maybe it's just me putting too much into this, the first sign of somebody being totally obsessed with something — but maybe I still haven't seen more than just the beginning. That's why I am here. At least, I hope that's why I'm here.

Also, I have this theory about the abstract, which comes from my working a lot with making typefaces: Designing a typeface is essentially a work of abstraction since the individual letters have to have the recognizable characteristics that make them those individual letters. An 'R' has to look like an 'R' in order to be legible — and still, there are so many ways to achieve this. You can make it tall, thus providing it with eg. an ambience of the wild west, or flat with an inline (like on the 'Royales' deck), making it super-classy — but it is still first and foremost an 'R'. The same goes for playing cards, there are certain rules they have to abide by in order to be recognized as a deck of playing cards. If they don't, they will be nothing more than a personal arty project and assessed as such, but if they do, they will actually be able to tell stories nobody comes prepared for.
I'm still working on that theory, some time I may be able to explain it clearly [smiley].

Briefly about myself: Living on the island of Møn (we call it 'Moon') in Denmark, I'm married with four grown-up, moved-out children. I work as a graphic designer, primarily for the Copenhagen Jazz Festival (which was cancelled this year due to the virus), and on the side on both commercial and self-initiated projects (which among other stuff also cover my obsession with playing cards).

I am looking very much forward to being part of this community, so thanks again for letting me in!
Best regards to you all from Leo

[MagikFingerz]

As a fellow Scandinavian, let me be the first to welcome you to UC!

Would love to see the decks you've designed, do you have any pictures you can share?

[House of Cardistry]

Welcome aboard Leo! I’m new here myself, having joined about a month ago.

[Leo Scherfig]

Would love to see the decks you've designed, do you have any pictures you can share?

Thanks a lot, Tom
This is a quick picture of the most recent deck, the Hazy Deck (in danish it is called 'Tjalle').
I made it as a companion to a small children's book I made, about a stoned rat called Hazy (Tjalle). If you are very interested, you can see some more about it on my webpage:
https://leoscherfig.dk/Tjalle-cards

Best regards from Leo on Moon

.

[Bradius]

Welcome Leo to UC. Someone like MagikFingers can give you more of a perspective on the the more recent resurgence of playing cards as he has been around longer than me. I think Ellusionist was one of the early producers of what might be considered modern custom playing cards. However, there are some great custom playing cards going way, way back. One of my favorite decks is the Venise Simplon Orient Express deck, which was produced in 1890! Heck, the grand daddy of European playing cards is the Trzes' Mamluk deck (I am holding a recent reproduction of that deck in my hand), which is quite amazing (https://shop.spiorad.net/mamlukdeck.htm).

[House of Cardistry]

I’m actually kinda interested in the adventures of a stoned rat, but I’m not sure how well the Hitler and Stalin jokers will go over in today’s climate....

[Leo Scherfig]

Wow, looks great, Bradius!
Thanks for info!

Haha, House of Cardistry, you are absolutely right.
But the funny thing is, something strange happens when you sit with friends or family and play some card game, and all of a sudden it turns out that there is some kind of hierarchy even among the jokers! Sometimes you make additional rules, sometimes other stuff happens. But yeah, totally agree, it is a bit extreme with that kind of cards!
Originally I added them to the deck because of a term in danish, which translates to 'drawing the nazi-card', not sure if that's an english expression as well. It is used when somebody compares something current with what happened in nazi germany, the response then would be 'oh, now you're drawing the nazi-card'. And from then on it just escalated into also making a Stalin-card. The deck is not super mature, I guess those cards alone are proof of that...

[House of Cardistry]

Yes, we do have a phrase sort of like that in english, it’s called “playing the race card”... also, you may see this from time to time:

[Fes]

Hello Leo! Welcome to UC. Hazy is a very nicely done stoned rat. Your whole set of jokers are wonderful. I'm particularly fond of the Stalin and Hitler cards. Really good stuff! But I like to have a laugh. Those serious sorts may need to have a good poop before they can appreciate them.

[carribus]

Welcome to the forum Leo and thank you for sharing the pics of your deck!

[theCapraAegagrus]

Welcome to UC, Leo.