How to Design a Deck of Standard Playing Cards

Choose a material for your card. Generally, you would want a durable type of paper that's easy to slide. Easy-to-slide cards will help any dealer shuffle and deal the cards. Regular paper can still work for playing cards, too.

Design your pips. Pips are the symbols that are in the corner, and represent the suit of the card. They come in 4 variations: Spade, Club, Heart, Diamond. You will want to design each of these. Pip designs should be familiar to players, so you should use the most common pip designs.

Arrange the pips on the number cards. On cards A & 2-10, arrange a corresponding number of the pip of that suit on the card. Arrangements of these should be mostly symmetric, since then it will not matter what orientation the card is when it is drawn.  Aces are also sometimes illuminated, meaning they are decorated in some clear way, to make them stand out.

Design the face cards. Joker, Jack, Queen, and King, are all of the face cards. Keep in mind that jokers do not have pips. Designs are usually symmetric, like the number cards. The face cards are often similar, regardless of suit. Note that there are two jokers in every deck.

Design the back of the cards. These should be simple, and are often where the branding is. Like the fronts of the cards, they should be symmetric. If you include multiple card back variations, they will give away the card, so don't.

Label the cards. This part is simple. On the front of every card, you should put the value (A for Ace, J for Jack, Q for Queen, K for King, and JOKER for Joker) and the pip next to each other on two opposite corners.