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It is not that hard to design your own deck. This tutorial is with a goal to make printable graphic for printing either at home, or by commissioning printing company to do it for you. That can be preferable even for single deck, let alone for a bigger number for selling them. They have better printers and know printing settings as well as having skilled hands with paper cutting... or they have machines for that.
The tutorial follows my way of designing deck for easy printing and cutting by professionals, but anyone can do it, if you give it proper time and care.
Designing the card
The deck that you design should be somehow uniform. one deck is one whole and should be designed to look well. same font on all cards, 4 colors should be making consistent system, ideally art style should be consistent too.
This is my deck created from pictures around the internet made for personal use... The green leaf on back side as well as background for numbers keeps all cards in same style despite various arts and photomanips. If you want to draw entire deck, you should be able to keep art somehow consistent through the deck. Optimal is to make sketches of all the cards before you start doing each card. However before you start drawing or designing each card, there is something you need to know about and that is overlay.
If we design a card with size of 6x10 cm, we need to add some extra space for overlay. Dark gray on the picture. Overlay will be cut off leaving borderless final card. If you draw entire final card on paper you need to have it paced on the paper along with the overlay already. Same goes with drawing the card in computer or editing graphic. Unless you use frame, for example black or white edge that fills the overlay too.
Good advice is to create the graphic for the card bigger than final card. Allows kind of more details, but also, especially in the computer, it prevents pixelization of the picture - meaning that you would easily see each square of the picture. Unless you do pixel art, this effect is unlikely to be desired.
Back of the card deserves few words too. It is wise to consider if you want to use reversed cards in your deck. If so, the back side should look the same being straight or upside down.
Preparing for printing
Once you have the graphics prepared, you need to create pack of files for printing. Advantageous is to create a file as in above picture showing the overlay and card areas. Pass each card into this blueprint and do finishing touches here, like adding card numbers and texts, or frames. You can of course add more guidelines so that all cards are in same style and formatting.
When saving, keep your files in order, properly named and in same folder or in tree of folders that is tidy, for example having folder for each color and the mayor arcana. And don't forget the back side, that one must be generated through the same way.
If you send the files to the printer, you need to inform them about what is the size of the cards and how big is the overlay, so they can generate file for printing using your graphics and to make it look as close as possible to what you see in graphic designer you used. Meaning that the overlay is gone and you get the card.
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Hint: You can speed up process of printing for the company if you generate the file yourself, if you have software like Adobe InDesign. You need to set the size of the page in this program to be same as size of the card and add extra overlay equal to the one on your graphic. Then add in the cards, one per page and the back as well, ideally on the last page. Make sure the pictures are in the file, not linked. Also that they fill entire frame of page along with overlay. In InDesign page is BW and overlay will be colored.
How to set overlay in new document in InDesign CS6. Sorry, it's not English, but it's where it is here.
Be sure to ask ahead if the company would accept indd file of your program version, but in my experience it's not a problem and the print is processed way faster, because they do not have to prepare it, they can directly send it to printers... You better to have the file prepared right. if unsure, just don't do it and wait for them to do it.
The tutorial follows my way of designing deck for easy printing and cutting by professionals, but anyone can do it, if you give it proper time and care.
Designing the card
The deck that you design should be somehow uniform. one deck is one whole and should be designed to look well. same font on all cards, 4 colors should be making consistent system, ideally art style should be consistent too.
This is my deck created from pictures around the internet made for personal use... The green leaf on back side as well as background for numbers keeps all cards in same style despite various arts and photomanips. If you want to draw entire deck, you should be able to keep art somehow consistent through the deck. Optimal is to make sketches of all the cards before you start doing each card. However before you start drawing or designing each card, there is something you need to know about and that is overlay.
If we design a card with size of 6x10 cm, we need to add some extra space for overlay. Dark gray on the picture. Overlay will be cut off leaving borderless final card. If you draw entire final card on paper you need to have it paced on the paper along with the overlay already. Same goes with drawing the card in computer or editing graphic. Unless you use frame, for example black or white edge that fills the overlay too.
Good advice is to create the graphic for the card bigger than final card. Allows kind of more details, but also, especially in the computer, it prevents pixelization of the picture - meaning that you would easily see each square of the picture. Unless you do pixel art, this effect is unlikely to be desired.
Back of the card deserves few words too. It is wise to consider if you want to use reversed cards in your deck. If so, the back side should look the same being straight or upside down.
Preparing for printing
Once you have the graphics prepared, you need to create pack of files for printing. Advantageous is to create a file as in above picture showing the overlay and card areas. Pass each card into this blueprint and do finishing touches here, like adding card numbers and texts, or frames. You can of course add more guidelines so that all cards are in same style and formatting.
When saving, keep your files in order, properly named and in same folder or in tree of folders that is tidy, for example having folder for each color and the mayor arcana. And don't forget the back side, that one must be generated through the same way.
If you send the files to the printer, you need to inform them about what is the size of the cards and how big is the overlay, so they can generate file for printing using your graphics and to make it look as close as possible to what you see in graphic designer you used. Meaning that the overlay is gone and you get the card.
---
Hint: You can speed up process of printing for the company if you generate the file yourself, if you have software like Adobe InDesign. You need to set the size of the page in this program to be same as size of the card and add extra overlay equal to the one on your graphic. Then add in the cards, one per page and the back as well, ideally on the last page. Make sure the pictures are in the file, not linked. Also that they fill entire frame of page along with overlay. In InDesign page is BW and overlay will be colored.
How to set overlay in new document in InDesign CS6. Sorry, it's not English, but it's where it is here.
Be sure to ask ahead if the company would accept indd file of your program version, but in my experience it's not a problem and the print is processed way faster, because they do not have to prepare it, they can directly send it to printers... You better to have the file prepared right. if unsure, just don't do it and wait for them to do it.