The Story Behind Dive to You Tarot

 

The illustrations for Dive to You Tarot were created by illustrator Salgoo

I first discovered her work while searching for an artist to collaborate with on Grafolio. At the time, there seemed to be a challenge where artists were creating their own interpretations of Sailor Moon, and Salgu's version immediately caught my attention. As I explored more of her work, I realized she was already a well-established illustrator.

Fortunately, she gladly accepted our invitation to collaborate, and we began working together in September 2020.

The entire journey took approximately two years and two months, although the actual period spent actively creating the deck was closer to one year and three months.

There were several reasons why the project took longer than we initially expected. Salgu had a busy schedule, and we also had personal matters that occasionally slowed things down.

Interestingly, about two-fifths of all the illustrations were completed during an intense three-month stretch toward the project’s completion.

Looking back, it was a long process—but that time became part of what shaped Dive to You Tarot into the deck it is today.

 

 

 

The Guidebook That Almost Became a Book

When we created the original large-format edition of Dive to You Tarot—we didn't actually call it the "Big Size" edition at the time—I never imagined that the guidebook would become one of the most difficult parts of the entire project.

Looking back now, I sometimes wonder whether we tried to put too much interpretation into it.

A guidebook, after all, doesn't contain the one definitive meaning of a tarot card. It contains only a selection from countless possible interpretations. In hindsight, I think we could have said less and left more room for the reader's own intuition.

But at the time, we wanted to include as much as we could.

And fitting all of that information into a limited amount of space turned out to be incredibly difficult.

Creating the guidebook for the large-format edition was already challenging. When we later adapted it for the smaller Regular Size edition, it became even harder. We revised it over and over again—adjusting the text, letter spacing, line spacing, and layout just to make everything fit while keeping it readable.

Originally, we had an even more ambitious idea.

For the large-format edition, we planned to create one combined guidebook containing both Korean and English.

Then we printed a sample.

For a moment, I didn't know what to say.

The guidebook was thicker than the tarot deck itself.

It had grown to more than 300 pages.

And that was without any card illustrations.

We had originally wanted to include images of the cards as well, so that beginners could easily find the card they were looking for. But if we had added the illustrations on top of the Korean and English interpretations, it would no longer have been a guidebook.

 

 

It would have been a brick.

So, for the large-format edition, we ultimately had to remove the card illustrations and the English interpretations.

And even after all that— the guidebook was still thick.

Very thick. Almost brick-like.

That experience eventually changed the way we think about tarot guidebooks at Mucult.

Sometimes, less explanation leaves more room for intuition.