Sphinx Card Design
AIGA DFW hosts an annual community card deck design project where creatives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area can sign up to contribute their artwork into the card deck.
AIGA DFW’s Community Card Deck’s theme for 2021 was Cryptids, and my assigned cryptid was the sphinx. Each participant is given a color palette and a set of rules to follow for their design. Through those restrictions, I designed a card based on the Greek mythological sphinx and the Egyptian sphinx.
Earlier Iterations
Before sketching out my design, I did a bit of research behind the story of the sphinx and the visual elements in Greek mythology and Egyptian hieroglyphics. I found that the Greek sphinx had wings and wore a headband in most of the visuals I could find. The Egyptian Sphinx of Giza had a specific headpiece and no wings. I used a similar body structure but different facial and hair features to compare the two. The greek sphinx I designed had a straight and wavy hair look with a simple headband, whereas the Egyptian sphinx had a headpiece, and her eyeliner extended a bit away from the corners of her eyes.
Final Design
Working with only three colors, green being the background, proved to be difficult, especially when it came to how to create the headpiece for the Egytian sphinx. I chose to use black and silhouette of the headpiece and added some papyrus plants in the background to add a bit of detail. It seemed that both Greek and Egyptian art contain some depiction of papyrus or a similar plant so I made that the unifier between the two sphinxes. The layout of the design was intended to be similar to a standard card design where one portion mirrors the other in a diagonal fashion. Taking in consideration of previous designs from other artists in the past decks, I chose to have mine be asymetrical as most designs tend not to symmetrical.
Final Remarks
Though the final design was simple as I intended it to be, I feel like it could have had more visual elements to the background without overwhelming the viewer. However, the card design was well-received by the other collaborators of the deck, who noted the symbolism of both sphinxes from different backgrounds.