Have you ever wondered how tarot cards are made and manufactured? That is a question that popped into my mind when I was shuffling my tarot cards, so I decided to do some research.
All things that we see around us started with an idea by someone who wanted to make that something into reality. Each tarot card deck that we hold in our hands is no different. Each packaged deck has started from a creative idea that ultimately ends through various design and manufacturing faces to our hands.
While researching this process, I found out, to my surprise, that it wouldn’t be such a complicated process to produce your deck even in small quantities. At the end of this article, I will give some info on that, but first, let’s look at how the process goes with commercial cards step by step.
How are tarot cards made?
- Step One: Everything starts by designing the tarot deck.
- Step Two: The raw materials, either paper or plastic, are chosen.
- Step Three: Printing plates are created, and the printing press is prepared for printing
- Step Four: Printing starts when sheets of paper or plastic are fed into the printing press
- Step Five: When the printed sheets come out of the printing press, the tarot cards are cut out of the printed sheets.
- Step Six: The cut and ready tarot deck is wrapped into the chosen packaging.
- Step Seven: Tarot cards are now ready to be used
Step One: Design
All things kick off with a creative process by designing the deck. This will be the most time-consuming part of the process as most Tarot decks have 78 unique cards in them. That is a lot of designing to do!
The design process is a topic of its own, but it goes something like this:
- The artists or creatives pick a medium to produce their creative work into the final image. They can be painted, drawn, or created with graphic design software.
- Then the artist plans its artwork. They choose the style that they will us and gather all the ideas together for each card. As we are talking about tarot cards, many details go into each card.
- After the planning phase, the creative will then start producing the work onto the paper. Remember, there are 78 cards!
- The last phase of the design process is digitalization. The beautiful drawings need to be transferred into a digital format to be sent to the printing plant.
Step Two: Choosing raw materials
Tarot cards are mostly made out of paper or plastic. Paper is cheaper and not as durable as plastic, and therefore less expensive tarot decks are made of paper. The paper used in tarot cards is layered paper. It is more durable and stronger than regular paper, and it is made by stacking several sheets of paper and gluing them together.
The more high-end decks are usually made of polymeric plastic sheets. As this material is more durable than paper, these cards will last the test of time better than paper cards.
Step Three: Preparing the print press
When everything is ready with the design and the raw materials have been chosen and delivered to the manufacturing facility, the printing machine is prepared.
The first thing is to create the printing plates. A particular laser printer transfers the digital image to the surface of the printing plate. The number of printing plates needed is defined by the number of colors used on the design. Each printing plate will transfer one color to the cards. After the printing plates are ready, they are mounted to the printing machine.
The printing machine also requires ink, so the desired color ink is poured into the machine. The printing machine has a combination of ink and rubber rollers inside it, which are used to transmit the ink onto the cards.
Step Four: Printing starts
When the printing starts, the paper or plastic sheets are fed into the print press by automatic feeders. Each sheet will eventually have all the tarot cards of one deck printed on them. You can get some idea of the sheet’s size if you place all cards of one deck on the floor, tightly tucked together side by side. It’s a bit bigger than that as later some pieces will be cut off.
When the paper or plastic sheet hits the press, the ink-covered ink-rollers will transmit the ink onto the printing plates. Then the rubber rollers will touch the ink-covered printing plates to suck the image onto their surface, and finally, from there, the image will be printed onto the paper or plastic sheet that will be the final surface of the card.
When the printed sheets come out of the press, they are first flattened and stacked. After that, they are put into the print press the other side down to get the back of the cards printed as well.
Step Five: Cutting the sheet into the cards
After the sheets have been printed, they are moved through a cutting machine, which first cuts the sheets into columns and then into individual cards. When this has been done, the cards are gathered together into separate decks. Then they go through another cutting machine, which will finalize the shape and make sure that all the cards in the deck are identical.
Step Six: Packaging
Finally, the conveyor belt from the last cutting station will bring the cards into a packaging machine. Here the cards are most likely wrapped with cellophane and then boxed into its packaging.
Some decks come with fancy storage boxes, so on this step, they would also be placed inside the storage box together with the guidebook that usually comes with the tarot deck.
Step Seven: Ready for use
The Tarot cards are now ready for shipping and to be sold for tarot readers around the world!
As you can see, the process is pretty simple after the design phase is done. Then it is pretty much about the print and packaging process. Here is the same process described on video.
How to make your own tarot cards?
The process described above might sound a bit intimidating due to the manufacturing process. But if you are thinking about making your own DIY deck, worry not! I was super surprised to learn that you can make smaller patches of decks as well. Even if you are looking to make just one customized deck, the expenses are no more than buying a deck of cards from a retailer.
The most significant expense will be either your own time for designing the deck or the money you use to hire an artist to do it for you. I am not artistically skilled or talented, so I would have to go with hiring someone.
The printers they use for customized decks are so much smaller and agile that they can print smaller quantities with ease. The larger quantities you print, the cheaper it gets per deck. Here is an example of what it would cost to print a tarot deck with one US manufacture on high-end plastic cardstock with custom packaging and booklet.
| Amount | Cost |
| 1-5 | $59.45 |
| 6-29 | $51.15 |
| 30-49 | $45.70 |
| 50-99 | $41.50 |
| 100-249 | $37.65 |
| 250-499 | $34.05 |
If you want to know more about the design process and how to make your own cards, here is Swandzz, an actual artist sharing her personal experience of designing and producing a tarot deck.
A list of Tarot card manufacturers
Here are some card manufacturers I found while I was researching this topic. If you are interested in making your cards, it is good to check several for quotes, especially if you make them in large quantities.