How to design and print a custom oracle card deck using Midjourney and Claude

Why your AI art deserves to be printed on card stock

Let's be entirely honest: most AI-generated art is doomed to a miserable, fleeting existence. It gets posted to a Discord channel, gets a couple of fire emojis, and is immediately swallowed by the endless scroll. That is a waste.

If you want to actually feel the weight of what you are creating, you need to bring it into the physical world. A custom oracle card deck is the absolute perfect weekend project for this. Unlike Tarot—which requires 78 highly specific, historically rigid cards—an oracle deck can be whatever you want it to be. It could be based on cyberpunk dystopias, brutalist architecture, or even a cheeky deck of "Corporate Existential Dread" to help you decide whether to quit your job.

By pairing the conceptual genius of Claude with the raw aesthetic power of Midjourney, you can design, write, and print a fully realised, professional-grade physical deck in less than 48 hours. Here is exactly how to make it tick.

Step 1: Brainstorming the theme and list with Claude

Do not start by generating random pretty pictures. If you do, your deck will lack cohesion. You need a strong, singular concept first.

Open up Claude and ask it to help you conceptualise a 36-card deck. Avoid generic fantasy tropes. Instead, push for something with a bit of bite. Here is a prompt structure to get you started:

> "I want to design a custom 36-card oracle deck. The theme is 'The Architect's Ghost'—focused on brutalist architecture, concrete landscapes, and quiet, melancholic moments of isolation. I need you to suggest 36 card names, each with a brief 2-sentence meaning (one upright, one reversed) that feels deeply poetic and slightly mysterious. Avoid cliché fantasy language."

Claude is spectacular at this. It will spit out a structured list of cards like The Monolith, The Exposed Rebar, or The Rain-Stained Plinth. Once you have this list, keep the chat open. You will need Claude later to write the companion guidebook. For more prompt inspiration on building structural concepts, check out our prompt generator.

Step 2: Cracking the visual code in Midjourney

Your biggest challenge here is visual consistency. If Card 1 looks like a 1970s oil painting and Card 2 looks like a high-contrast digital render, your deck will look like a disorganised mess. You need a style wrapper.

To find your visual signature, experiment with Midjourney's --sref (Style Reference) parameter. Find one image that perfectly captures the vibe you want—perhaps a vintage film photograph with muted greens and harsh shadows—and use its URL in your prompts.

Your prompt template should look something like this:

[Card Concept description], brutalist architecture style, minimalist, muted colour palette, shot on 35mm film, grainy texture, high contrast, surrealism --ar 2:3 --sref [Your Reference Image URL] --v 6.0

Notice the --ar 2:3 aspect ratio. This matches standard card dimensions perfectly.

Tip: If you run into prompt bleeding or Midjourney refuses to render your specific surreal concepts, consult the Midjourney Support Centre for advanced parameter troubleshooting.

Generate your images one by one. Do not settle for "good enough." Keep variations going until each card feels like a genuine piece of physical art. Save them all in a dedicated folder in high resolution.

Step 3: Writing the guidebook with Claude

Every good oracle deck needs a guidebook to explain the card meanings. This is where Claude shines over other models. It excels at maintaining a specific, nuanced tone without veering into cheesy, corporate-style AI prose.

Feed your finalized list back to Claude and ask it to write the text for the physical booklet. Use a prompt like this:

> "We are writing the guidebook for our 'Architect's Ghost' deck. For each of the 36 cards, write a 150-word entry. Include: the card name, a short poetic epigraph, an 'In Light' interpretation (upright), and an 'In Shadow' interpretation (reversed). The tone should be philosophical, quiet, and slightly melancholic."

Review the outputs. If Claude starts sounding too much like a generic self-help guru, tell it to strip out the fluff and focus on raw imagery. Once satisfied, copy the text into a document. You can easily format this later using a tool like Figma—for tips on building seamless UI and layouts, take a look at our guide on Figma Weave.

Step 4: Formatting and printing your deck

Now, let's make it real. You don't need to be a graphic designer to format these. Services like MPC (MakePlayingCards) or Game Crafter allow you to upload images directly onto standard-sized tarot or oracle card templates.

1. Prepare the files: Ensure your images are upscaled. Use a high-quality upscaler to get them to at least 300 DPI.
2. Design the card back: Don't ignore the back of your cards. It should be symmetrical so players can't tell if a card is drawn upright or reversed. A simple geometric pattern generated in Midjourney works beautifully here.
3. Layout the text: If you want text on the card fronts (like the card title), use a clean, modern font that matches your theme. Keep it small and out of the way of the artwork.
4. Order a sample: Before ordering ten decks for your friends, order a single test deck. This lets you check the colour calibration, card stock thickness, and overall feel in your hands.

Holding your physical deck for the first time is a bizarrely satisfying feeling. You’ve successfully taken ephemeral, digital intelligence and turned it into a tangible heirloom that will sit on your coffee table for years.