#dsmp project

Hello faithful readers! It’s time for another brief project update to keep you up to speed on how things are going behind the scenes in the world of DSMP Tarot!

Keep reading below the cut for updates and a new special sneak peek!

As we mentioned last update, the date for final submissions is currently June 7th. We are expecting preorders to be open around mid-to-late June or early July! Keep an eye out for an official date announcement.

Our second check-in went smoothly and all our contributors are creating absolutely breathtaking works we can’t wait to share with you! As we get closer to preorders and start final submissions, we’ll be able to start sharing our previews with you so you can get a look at part of most cards. We might even reveal a full card or two!

We wanted to take time in this update to explain briefly how previews will be working, for anyone who isn’t familiar with zines and other related projects, just to make sure people aren’t confused. Each contributor in the project will receive a special spotlight graphic, and in that graphic we will show a preview of the card (or one of the cards), merch, or writing they have done for us. You’ll be seeing about ¼ to 1/3 of the main focus of the full card, so you can get an idea of what the deck is going to look like in its full form (and start sleuthing out some of those card subjects, if you’re curious!). We function like any zine project, meaning we will not show the full art before project completion, though we might, as we said, reveal a full card or two during preorders for some fun. Why do we do this? Because customers are paying for an exclusive, limited edition product, and it would be unfair to them, especially those purchasing our PDF bundle, if the art was fully viewable before they receive their copies. It’s not an attempt to be sneaky, cheat people, or sell a subpar product; it’s how nearly all of these products work, rest assured. We encourage anyone who finds themself truly uncomfortable with purchasing during preorders to stick around until project leftovers, after all the preorders have been sent out and full pieces posted for them to look through and decide if they want a copy. Hopefully this explanation makes things clear for anyone who might have been confused!

And now, as a treat for your support and continued interest, we’d like to reveal to you our official card back and border! Each card will have the same back and a border on the front with the card name added by Mod Ly, our incredible graphics mod and designer of our lovely template here.

This is just a sample version of the front with placeholder text that our artists have been using during creation; for production, Mod Ly will be adding each card’s name individually. It’s a spin on the Rider-Waite card borders—and many other deck borders!—custom-made to match our project branding! Among other reasons, we’ve added this border to make the deck appear as cohesive a unit as possible, since we have such a wonderful range of artists contributing to the deck. The sized-down preview files are a little blurry thanks to tumblr crunching the quality, but the full version is extremely high-quality and print-ready, don’t worry ;)

That’s all for now! Be sure to keep an eye out for future project updates, as we’re getting closer and closer to time for previews and preorders! Thank you for your interest and support so far. We’re so happy to be bringing you this project, and here’s a little something for the road….