Do The Titles Bug You?

Grizabella said:

I have to confess that I trimmed the Circle of Life and I like it much better that way but there's no way to tell what the cards are now. I love the art work on that deck but I don't use it very much, so losing the titles is okay---for now. If I ever decide to use it, let's hope it will still be readable.

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Ha. That happened to me once, with the Bosch Tarot. Once trimmed to perfection, I couldn't tell which card was what...

So I traded it away, got a new one and trimmed it, but left the titles on. Lesson learned.

Another lesson learned: some decks want you to keep titles and/or keywords. The Thoth is one. So I have a pair of title-less, keyword-less trimmed Thothies, and a pair of (also trimmed) ones with them.

Thanks to this thread I'm now imagining trying to use a Thoth deck printed in Comic Sans. Great.

Quite honestly? As a graphic arts student, badly-designed decks make my soul cry. I can't buy a deck, no matter how nice the art is, if the outside formatting or title font looks unattractive.

Not a font thing, but title related. I adore Chrysalis tarot, but the titles on the major arcana and the troupe (re imagined court cards) bug me.

Here is why: the major arcana got a makeover, and it has the title of the card, then under it it has the title of the RWS version. The thing is, it makes no sense. They kept the Moon and Sun cards so the moon card says: Moon and under it, it says: XVIII The Moon
Redundant.
They got rid of Hierophant and replaced it with Divine Child but sure enough the card says Divine Child and then Hierophant underneath. It doesn't quite fit having the old title when the card has a new meaning.

With troupes (replacing court cards) It'll say The Corsair and underneath it says Knight of Spirals (spirals replaces wands in this deck) reason that bothers me is because they replaced court cards because they didn't want court cards and a pirate is not a knight so why have that under the title? The LWB says that instead of page, knight, queen, king it is Messenger, Mystic, Muse, Mentor. But I never remember because the cards have the "old" titles, concepts which were supposed to have been thrown away in this deck.
I like the new system of the troupes and the whole messenger, mystic, etc thing and it actually has potential to be helpful in remembering what role the Corsair plays for example. But with the card saying "knight" I automatically start thinking of the traditional system even though it doesn't apply with this deck.

I don't trim because the borders were designed by hand and are beautiful and would make the cards tiny

Sorry this turned into a rant, it has been bugging me from day one and is the only problem I have with this deck, but I have been keeping that to myself forever so I had to let it out now.

nisaba said:

I still don't get the whole title things. I can see, reading this thread, that it's an issue for a lot of you, but how do you even see the titles? Don't you look into the soul of the card? Where's the title then? I never even notice them.

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Short answer: I see it because it's there. This may not be true for everyone, but my eyes notice numbers first if there are any, then letters. I am the type that sees small details immediately, and then the big picture.