I can only speak for myself, and I can say with all honesty, the artists are involved for the cause alone. We didn't do it for the money, nor for the advertising. The notion of putting the artist bio on the cards were informed to us pretty close to the completion date and we supported Ron all the way.
Having said that, I understand this is a tarot deck and having a LWB to explain each card would have been a more practical (?) and traditional (?) approach. However, being involved in the group discussion, I was constantly updated by Ron on the decisions he had to make. There was not enough crowd funding support to go with the initial size of the cards as intended. He came to the artists and gave us the figures and showed us the options he had.
It would not have been fair to have him fork out the excess required to print the cards as advertised in the beginning. This was a charity project; a percentage of whatever excess after production cost would be donated to the Breast Cancer Foundation. Was it The Fool card throwing Murphy's Law back in our faces? Maybe. Was it unfair to those who backed the project financially on the crowd funding site based on early information given? Definately, based on the feedback I have seen here. It's no excuse, it's an explaination which I felt would help those who supported the cause and the project understand the process of what happened.
The artists backed this project by donating artwork and some even bought the deck themselves. I am truly sorry to hear that the layout of the cards did not meet expectations, and that the cards were fugly because of that.
I do know based on the discussion in the group chat Ron set up for the artists that a lot of thought went into each card, in terms of symbolism and messages the artists hope to share in support of the cause. It is a deck for healing and for hope. Please keep it that way even if the layout or the size of the cards had to be compromised. It was a chose between not getting it out there at all or compromising the card size and publication layout to ensure the deck gets published.
It is unfair to ask any of the members here to not attack Ron or his team but in truth, he had hard choices to make and he made them so that those who did back the crowd funding project didn't walk away with nothing. If anything, it is a collaboration project and anyone who has ever participated in those here or elsewhere would know, when the deck is done and the artists or participants get a copy of the printed deck, it would not be the same as buying a deck off the shelves from any one individual deck creator. These deck are like a patchwork or sorts but they have their own quirky charm even if they don't make it as your or my everyday reading deck.
Thank you for reading this. It's sent from my phone so expect a lot of typos because iPhone is just awesome that way
Ash