Handmade Oracle Cards
The Oracle is embodied as two decks of cards. Together, they provide a randomized source of inspiration. Draw the cards. Consider their content. Break free of the blank page.
Prototype
The pictured decks are the first prototype, and are made up of a number of concrete nouns and a number of abstract ideas. The specific words selected and the icons that represent them were the result of many hours pouring through lists of reasonable candidates.
Manufacture
The cards themselves were printed on 90 pound buff card stock. The faces and backs were printed several cards at a time on separate sheets of stock, which were glued together with a permanent spray-mount adhesive. Once pressed, the individual cards were cut out with a rotary paper cutter, and the corners rounded off with a punch.
We considered several approaches to making a deck of cards at home, read a number of blog posts from the board game community on the subject, and settled on this approach as simple and direct. While I would certainly not manufacture cards in any quantity by this technique, it worked well, went smoothly, and the result has a really nice feel in the hand.
Since the backs are printed separately from the faces, they could have been printed on a different color (or several different colors) of card stock. I chose to make them differ only in the color of a single feature because I didn’t have other colors of card stock at hand. The result is distinct enough to sort the cards if accidentally shuffled together, and looks classy, professional, and designed.
Faces
The card faces each carry a word and an icon for or related to the word. All of the words were selected from the amazing collection of open source iconographic art found at The Noun Project by Ross Berteig and Clifford Ball. A few images were touched up or tweaked before use, primarily to make a noun’s slightly less specific. And in a few cases, the nouns used by the original artist have been edited for length or replaced outright to better fit the intended use of the finished cards.
Icons from The Noun Project are individually licensed under either Creative Commons CC-BY or are deeded over to the Public Domain. A complete report of the attribution for each icon used in that deck appears at the end of this page.
Sample Spread of Four
Two from each collection dealt in a spread for reading. In the case of the spread shown, we clearly have a textbook case of “beer goggles leading to drunk calling”.
Attribution Report
This report was generated automatically from the script that prepared the card faces for printing. The nouns listed appear in the First Embodiment.
The First Embodiment card deck as a whole is Copyright (2014) Ross Berteig and Clifford Ball. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The image artwork used in these card designs were selected from the large assortment of iconographic art found at The Noun Project by Ross Berteig and Clifford Ball. A few images are touched up or tweaked before use. And in a few cases, the names used by the original artist have been edited for length or replaced outright to better fit the intended use of the finished cards.
The following icons are from The Noun Project and are used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
By Minna Ninova:
* Lantern
By Juan Pablo Bravo:
* Gentleman
* Typewriter
* Superhero
* Knight
By Travis Yunis:
* Crow
* Owl
* Eye of Providence
By Fabien Jouin:
* Carrot
* Fish
* Apple
* Beer
* Spatula
By Leonard Ellom Quist:
* Affluence
* Afterlife
* Against All Odds
* Authenticity
* Change
* Commitment
* Cooperation
* Creativity
* Endurance
* Envy
* Excellence
* Grace
* Fate
* Fearlessness
* Fortitude
* Freedom
* Guardianship
* Hope
* Humility
* Strength
* Infinite
* Intelligence
* Jealousy
* Justice
* Knowledge
* Leadership
* Past Experience
* Learning
* Love
* Loyalty
* Omnipotence
* Omnipresence
* Parenthood
* Peace
* Protection
* Providence
* Prudence
* Purity
* Readiness
* Reconciliation
* Security
* Unity
* Transformation
* Understanding
* Valor
* Vigilance
* Wisdom
By Luis Prado:
* Deer in the Headlights
* Disguise
* Puppet
* Trumpeter
* Shark Attack
* Levitation
* Bad Luck
* Lost
* Cake Knife
By matthew hall:
* Pipe
* Tree
* Mustache
* Rocket
* Puzzle
* Diamond
* Magnifying Glass
* Glasses
* Bomb
By EricP:
* Sphinx
By Brianna Reed:
* Frog
By Benni:
* Cat
* Tunnel
By Kelcey Benne:
* Broken Mirror
By Jeremy J Bristol:
* Optical Illusion
By Scott Lewis:
* Telephone
* Poison
* Levitation
The following icons are in the Public Domain:
* rat by Timothy Dilich
* voodoo-doll by James Keuning
* record-player by James Keuning
* birdcage by James Keuning
The Creativity Oracle 