Although some people think that the Crazier Eights cards looks a lot like Magic: the Gathering, the card frame and layout are both different from Magic cards. Even so, it might be a good idea to change the look of the Crazier Eights cards to some extent.
There is a type of intellectual property called “Trade Dress.” The idea is that the look of a product should not be deceptive — it should not confuse consumers. I can’t make a product that looks so similar to Magic cards (or any other card game) in such a way that it is likely to confuse a consumer into thinking my product is some other product.
There are some similarities. The yellow cards have a sun suit symbol, and white Magic cards use sun symbols as well. The Sun is a pretty common symbol and it is associated with the color yellow, but perhaps it would be on the safe side to remove the Sun symbol from yellow Crazier Eights cards since it resembles the white Magic card frame to some extent.
Right now the card frames and associated suit symbols of Crazier Eights are the following:
Also note that some people suggested that the suit symbols could be larger or thicker. The cards below will use larger/thicker symbols to show how that could end up looking.
Option 1
One somewhat easy option is to change the suit symbol for yellow cards. I could change it to stars. Let’s call this option 1. (See the card below.)
Option 2
I could use the traditional French playing card suits instead of the more fancy and potentially more interesting suits. The cards could look like this using the regular playing card suits:
Option 3
I could switch some of the symbols around and make the suit symbols larger to be the following. That would stop the association between the Sun symbol and the yellow cards:
Note that this combination changes the colors that three of the suits are associated with: Sun (red), Moon (blue), Eye (yellow), and Ankh (green).
Option 4
Another option is to change the colors. I could introduce orange and/or purple. One example of a new color combination using those colors is the following:
The color association of these three cards are the following: Sun (orange), Eye (purple), Moon (blue), and Ankh (green).
Option 5
There is one other somewhat unrelated change I am considering — I could change what the eye symbol looks like. Here are three options:
What do you think? Should I use some larger suit symbols, change the colors the suits use, use orange or purple cards, or change the eye symbol?
Related
Crazier Eights 
This is really great. Can these be found on the internet to purchase?
Segmation,
Thanks for your interest.
The game is currently on Kickstarter. Go here
to take a look.
Or you could remove the symbol altogether. You already have the color; what does the symbol do? People mostly match based on the color anyways. There are some corner cases where it is convenient to have a symbol, but I do not see a big reason to keep it there to support just those cases.
Some people are colorblind and find them helpful.
I like Option 4 the most, and Option 2 the least.
Thanks for letting me know. The orange looks a bit weird to me. Might work on it a bit more. Do you think those four colors would be best? I might want to sneak yellow back in.
I would like to propose a sixth layout option if I may. Keep the current frame but create an open bubble between the art and text box. Place a larger, more legible rank number in that bubble. The rank should be easy to find and read by 4 players sitting around a table with the discard in the center. The suit symbols could be placed in smaller bubbles in the upper right and lower left corners, once again, a little larger. And also center the title and type text. All of that should pull you far enough away from Magic to make it noticeably different, make it easier to play the game and make it easier to use the cards as regular playing cards as well. The bubble in the center may take up some real estate, but it makes for an easier game, especially for non-gamers.
Joshua,
Thanks for the feedback. Do you have any preference regarding the options already being discussed?
Probably #4