Julio Romero: Week 7 Laser Engrave

I decided to make playing cards for the laser engraving assignment because I find it fascinating how simple yet iconic the ace cards are. For the two main cards I wanted to play with negative and positive space to mimic the look of cards, as well as combining both cards of the same color, and for the third I wanted to create the back of a card. I also wanted to make each one distinct from the others by using different cut types.

I used Adobe Illustrator to create the 3 card outlines, each one 2.5" by 3.5" to match the size of real cards, and colored the lines magenta to make the outside cut. The heart/diamond card was designed using only inside cuts by first scaling down the outside cut line for the border and then creating two lines that went from the bottom left corner to the top right corner and two smaller lines that connected the other two corners. I then used a square grid to position and design the heart, and then used a smaller grid to make the diamond. I copied the two shapes, scaled them down, and then moved them to the corners with the smaller lines. To remove the parts of the lines that intersected the shapes, I used the shape builder tool, and then joined the two halves of the heart and diamond vertically so that it would cut out the diamond without affecting the heart.

For the spades/club card I designed using raster shapes. I created most of the shapes the same as the first card but gave them no outline and either white or 50% grey fill; I couldn't get the club to look how I wanted, so I just found an image online and used that instead.

The backside card I designed using shallow engraving using spirals, circles, arcs, and a few diamonds. I focused mainly on the top left corner and then mirroring it horizontally first and then vertically.

I painted the two ace cards to match their suite- the main color was red for the heart/diamond card, and the main color for the other card was black, with both having a white background. I chose to leave the back card unpainted so that it could maintain its natural wooden color and to set it apart from the other two.