The Back Of The Card - A Brief History & Showcase Of Our Playing Card Back Designs

Tiger vs. Snake - back design

Most people never really look at the back of a playing card. It registers somewhere below conscious attention - part of the environment, like the wallpaper in a familiar room. But the back of a playing card is one of the most considered surfaces in the history of graphic design: a confined rectangle that has been drawn, engraved, lithographed and hand-illustrated by some of the finest decorative artists of the last three centuries.

This is a brief history of how it got that way - and a showcase of the back designs we have drawn by hand at A. Haines Playing Cards.

Why Backs Were Decorated In The First Place

The Patron Sophisticated Playing Cards - back design

For the first several centuries of the playing card's existence in Europe, backs were plain white or simply coloured - functional rather than designed. Two practical problems changed that. First, a plain white card held at the right angle near a light source could reveal something of the face through the paper. A decorated back, with its layer of ink, eliminated that advantage entirely. Second, plain backs show wear, dirt and deliberate marking far more readily than patterned ones - making ornate back designs, in part, a built-in defence against cheating.

Function preceded beauty. But once the Victorian printing industry discovered what could be done with a well-designed back and beauty followed quickly.

Owen Jones, De La Rue & The Gilded Age

Golden Eagle No. 7 Vintage Playing Cards - back design

The Victorian era transformed the back of the playing card from a security measure into something genuinely beautiful. The firm most responsible for this was Thomas De La Rue and Company - and the designer most responsible within it was Owen Jones, one of the most influential decorative artists of the 19th century. Jones designed the interior of the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851, helped establish what would become the Victoria & Albert Museum, and wrote the Grammar of Ornament - one of the most important design reference works ever published.

Between 1844 and 1863, Owen Jones designed playing card backs for De La Rue. One hundred and seventy-three of them, documented in a hand-written list in the De La Rue archives. Moorish geometry, Gothic tracery, classical florals, Renaissance scrollwork - each one working within the specific constraints of the format: perfectly symmetrical in both axes, dense enough to prevent marking, and beautiful enough to justify the premium price of a De La Rue deck.

Charles Goodall and Son were producing equally distinguished backs from their Camden Town works - commemorative designs for Queen Victoria's Jubilee, the Shakespeare series, and a remarkable range of ornamental patterns that set the standard for everyone who followed. Between De La Rue and Goodall, the Victorian back design tradition was established so thoroughly that its visual grammar still runs through every premium playing card made today.

Goodall Medley - restoration deck - back design

The "Rules" Of The Back Design

While there are no rules, and a playing card back can be anything an artist wants it to be, if a deck is to appear legitimate and familiar at first glance - and not a novelty piece of art - it generally confirms to the following:

• 2way or 4way symmetry - whole or in part
• some level of flourish and scroll work within a series of geometric frames
• bold enough to be recognisable as a pattern from a distance - but intricate enough to reveal details upon inspection 
• monochrome (white + single colour) or full colour (less common)
• aesthetically pleasing & balanced 

Some Of Our Back Designs...

Every back design at A. Haines is drawn by hand from a blank canvas - no stock elements, no generative software, no vector shortcuts. The process is the same one Jones and the Goodall engravers used, translated into a Wacom pen and tablet drawing directly onto digital print templates. We never use A.I. or even vector assistance software - we draw by hand to intentionally achieve a timeless look and feel to our decks. 

Here are a few of our back designs:

Imported Playing Cards: Burgundy Edition - back design

Black Shuck Playing Cards - back design

Albatross No. 5 Nautical Playing Cards - back design

Red Lion Classic Playing Cards - Gold Gilded Edition - back design

The back of the card is never empty space. It is the first thing you see when you pick up a deck, the surface that spends the most time facing the world, and the design that defines how a deck feels to hold and to use. It is one of the most important aspects of a deck of playing cards. 

Browse the full A. Haines collection here - or find out more about the golden age of British playing cards here