A card deck that gets read once, front to back, and put back in its box has been used as a badly bound book.
The shape is the feature. Cards are separable, shufflable and dealable, and everything below is a use a book physically cannot support.
Six things to do with it
1. One a day. Take one card each morning, leave it somewhere it will be seen — a mirror, a desk, a dashboard — and put it back at the end of the day. Fifty-two cards is a year of Mondays, or two months of every day.
2. Deal it round a table. For a group deck at a leaving do or a birthday. Everyone takes three, reads them out, and the room reconstructs the person from fifty-two fragments. It takes about twenty minutes and it is the best use of a group deck there is. Card decks as a group gift →
3. Guess the year. Deal five, put them in order without looking at the backs, then check. Nobody is ever right, and the arguing is the game.
4. Pick one for someone. Hand a card to a person who is in it. This is the one that travels furthest — a card given away is the deck’s best advertisement for itself.
5. Leave one somewhere for them to find. In a bag before a trip, in a book, in a lunchbox. The single most-used thing anybody does with a couple’s deck.
6. Add to it by hand. The backs are blank enough to write on. A deck that is added to over a year stops being a finished gift.
| Use | Deck size | Works best for |
|---|---|---|
| One a day | 52 | Couples, long distance |
| Dealt at a table | 27 or 52 | Groups, parties |
| Guess the year | 52 | Old friendships |
| Given away, one card | Either | Group decks |
| Hidden for finding | Either | Couples |
What makes a deck playable
Decisions made before printing, and they are cheap to get right:
Do not number the cards. A numbered deck has an order, and an order is a book.
Do not put dates on the front. Put them on the back if at all — it keeps “guess the year” possible and it stops the deck sorting itself.
Keep the lines short. A card that takes thirty seconds to read cannot be dealt round a table of ten. What goes on a photo card →
Why this is the argument for the format
A magazine at ₹699 and a 27-card deck at ₹999 hold roughly comparable content. The deck costs more and holds less.
What it buys is repeat use. A magazine is read two or three times over a decade. A deck that has a use — a card a day, a game, a thing left in a bag — gets touched hundreds of times.
Flat ₹70 delivery anywhere in India.
For long distance specifically
The use that comes up most, and the one the format is best at.
Split the deck. Twenty-six cards each, and read the same numbered card on the same day. It is the closest a printed object gets to being in two places.
Post one at a time. A card in an envelope, once a fortnight, is a year of small arrivals for the price of one gift. Postage is trivial and the effect is not.
Leave the last few blank-backed on purpose, so they can be written on and sent back. A deck that travels in both directions is a different object from one that was given.
Frequently asked
What do you do with a photo card deck? Deal it, take one a day, leave one for someone to find, or give individual cards away. It is built to be handled rather than read once.
Should the cards be numbered? No. Numbering imposes an order, and an order makes it a book.
Can you play games with it? Yes — dealing it round a table and guessing the year of each card both work, and both need short lines and no dates on the front.
Is a deck worth more than a magazine? It holds less and costs more. What it buys is being picked up hundreds of times instead of read three times.
Can we add to it later? The backs can be written on, which is how a deck stops being a finished object.
Part of our guide to photo diaries and card decks. See also: card decks for couples and card decks as a group gift.
Built to be handled: Photo Card Deck from ₹999 · All 11 keepsakes