Terra Oracle was a creative project created in 2019 with my best friend, now business partner, Lindsey Cummins. Upon seeing the vast array of Tarot and Oracle decks being shared on websites like Etsy, Instagram, and Pinterest, but found few that had quality design, craftsmanship, and simple usability. In June, antsy after finishing college, we realized that making something like this isn’t far outside of our skills, so we decided to bite the bullet and start acting on our idea: The Terra Oracle Deck.

Over a period of 6 months, starting with a master plan on how the project will be developed from idea to initial product production, I spent nearly every evening after printing all day at Hound Dog Press determined to make this project happen. I made card designs, physical mockups, contacted printers and learned how order fulfillment works, researched best tactics to run a successful Kickstarter Campaign, studied how to start and run an LLC, and – most importantly – hand drew each of the 100 animals needed for our deck. To our amazement, after having done quite a bit of marketing in the preceding months, the Kickstarter surpassed its goal within three weeks in October of 2019. Fully funded with extra capital to spare, we made the final edits and finishing touches to design files, and ordered our first batch of card decks. To this date, two years later, we have sold over 1,500 Terra Oracle Decks, are carried in 16 different stores around the world, and are featured in a variety of Tarot and Magick articles and communities.

In my time working to develop and spread the product we each spent 1,000+ hours building from scratch, I gained more knowledge and experience than I ever would have imagined. I learned a ton of lessons around building successful projects, maintaining momentum without measurable success, marketing a small creative business, designing websites and online storefronts, working and communicating well with others that were part of the project, and many other bits of invaluable experience. To this day, I see Terra Oracle as the first stepping stone in my design journey.

Tools used: Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Trello, old-fashioned pen & paper