Just received my Giant Rider-Waite...

SolSionnach

Le Fanu said:
... I take it that the lettering on the Giant RWS is of the typeset variety...

Interesting that you should bump this thread as I was only this morning researching this deck and wondering about it... They have it in my local shop and it´s a Made in Italy one which made me a bit reluctant, but I did observe that the Magician card on the box had the handwritten lettering. Or could I have been mistaken?

Im in two minds about this deck, but... Made in Italy, death by lamination and all that...

By the way, Greg Im completely with you on this issue...Totally in agreement..... Ive just had this same annoyance with the Cosmic Tarot I bought recently. Typeset font imitating handwritten.. urgh...I mean, why, if handwritten titles already exist? Do they think we won´t be able to understand someone else´s handwriting?
That's why you need to search for the FXSchmidt version of the Cosmic. It's worth it - better card quality, too. :)
 

Logiatrix

Le Fanu said:
... I take it that the lettering on the Giant RWS is of the typeset variety...

Interesting that you should bump this thread as I was only this morning researching this deck and wondering about it... They have it in my local shop and it´s a Made in Italy one which made me a bit reluctant, but I did observe that the Magician card on the box had the handwritten lettering. Or could I have been mistaken?

Im in two minds about this deck, but... Made in Italy, death by lamination and all that...
If it's a sealed "Printed In Italy" GRW, then it will have the newer typeset card titles - despite what the box shows.:(

It's the GRW copies from Belgium that have the handwritten fonts. IMO, you'll also get better colors and better (not plasticky) cardstock with that one, too.:)
 

OnePotato

With the changeover from traditional film based printing to digital, a lot of old artwork has ended up getting recreated digitally.

While it is possible to simply scan old art, and create color separations from that, it is often desirable (for technical reasons) to recreate the artwork as "vector-based" art. This can allow the printer to make certain adjustments with much greater ease and control than scanned art would allow.

However, certain compromises have to be made in the process of reworking the image into the digital vector format. The minute variability of the hand drawn line is difficult to reproduce, so it is often sacrificed. Some people actually consider this an "improvement" to the image quality, (I do not.) as it results in a quality of absolute consistency. They presume that the original artist would have done it this way if they had had the option. (Again, I do not.)

In this case, it appears that it was much easier to just replace the hand done type with a typeset font than to reproduce the fine details of hand drawn characters. And/Or perhaps they thought they were "cleaning it up."
 

Bridget

OnePotato said:
In this case, it appears that it was much easier to just replace the hand done type with a typeset font than to reproduce the fine details of hand drawn characters. And/Or perhaps they thought they were "cleaning it up."
It's also possible that the film they originally used to print the deck was wearing out, and for whatever reason they couldn't reproduce the hand lettering. This happens sometimes when reprinting old books with art; if the original art is unavailable, then the printer has to use scans from a copy of the book, and the quality is often unacceptable. I imagine this would also affect hand lettering, though I don't know why the images themselves would be printable. Maybe they'd already had to be digitized to produce the different colored versions.

Also, are the card titles separate from the pictures themselves? If even one title was lost, the company would have redo the lettering for all the cards.

In any case, I agree that the hand lettering is nicer, and if they had to use a font, I don't see why they couldn't have used one more reminiscent of the original lettering. The current font is so utilitarian!
 

semioticon

Wow! I got my RWS on eBay, and it's a used copy from some time ago. It looks like I lucked out getting one without the new typeset titles and such!
 

The 78th Fool

The old Belgian editions have the Sun card on the front of the box rather than the Magician. This is what to look for if you're trying to track a vintage copy down on ebay.

Chris. xx
 

rachelcat

I know this is a really old thread, but I just wanted to share some good news. I'm doing a presentation using the RWS, and I thought, oh, that Giant I have will come in handy now! And then I remembered I gave it away because I was so bummed about the typeset titles.

Then, for once in my life (exagerating a bit), the Borders near my work had some new decks, and one was a Giant. I had a coupon, so I thought I'd take a chance and see if it was different.

It is!!! I am very happy with giant hand-lettered cards!

So if anyone else is wondering, I thought I'd give you the good news and describe it the best I can in case you want to know the difference.

Yellow box with the Sun on the front. On the bottom of the box:

ISBN-13: 978-0-88079-474-9
c 1971 U.S GAMES SYSTEMS, INC.
PRINTED IN CHINA PO-100081 02/2010(QP)

Enjoy!
 

rwcarter

Coolness, rachelcat!

The printed in Belgium deck has the Sun on the front of the box while the printed in Italy version has the Magician on the front of the box. So it appears that USG has returned to both the hand-lettered titles and Sun on the cover of the box with the new printed in China version.

:thumbsup: USG (and rachelcat for letting us know)!

Rodney
 

Brigid

This is great news! Thanks rachelcat. :)

I've been wanting to get a Giant, but kept putting it off because of the Italian printing and the typeset.
 

Sar

I want this one and the professional Universal Waite from Lo Scarabeo.