Post Mortem Tarot Deck

Post Mortem is a 90 card Tarot deck I made that features cards with AI generated imagery based on concepts and experiences from the creative technology and experience design industry.

For a short period of time in 2025, I will be selling a limited set of these cards here: www.postmortemtarot.store

Post Mortem started as an experiment in AI image generation, but I have often had an idea of creating a card game based on my experiences with projects. Even though I've never done a reading and I'm not a spiritual person, Tarot felt like a fun area to explore in terms of consistent imagery and style. Additionally, I think a lot of our industry does have a magical quality to it, both in terms of final result, and in the fact that the process works at all in the end. There are risks, failures, successes and stresses that test a lot of people. I've worked with many teams large and small and had great and extremely challenging projects (often both at the same time). There are many characters, archetypes, concepts and experiences that begin to appear the longer I'm in the space. I think a lot of these things end up earning a sort of mythical status. At the same time, it can be therapuetic to not take them so seriously and explore the area of satire and hyperbole as well. This card set is all of those things, a joke and a tool.

The Process

When I started, I came up with a basic list of cards and initially had mapped them to the major/minor arcana of Tarot (Death, The Hanged Man, Wheel of Fortune, etc). This worked for a while but I started to have ideas of my favorite concepts that just didn't fully fit into the same way of thinking, and also wouldn't be quite as exciting as the minor arcana (like Six of Cups, King of Swords).

For each concept, I developed prompts that mapped to how I viewed the character or concept, and then experimented with different elements to get it to render just right. For some I even had Claude AI help enhance some prompts. Examples for manually written prompts are below:

The Swag: tarot card featuring a canvas tote bag with a mystical logo floating in the air, backlit by light. t-shirts and stickers and gadgets float around it in a circular pattern. 'The Swag' text banner below.
The Data: tarot card featuring a tall mysterious human figure made completely out of charts, graphs and data. server racks and computer screens float behind them. 3 people are on their knees, bowing in praise to the mysterious figure. grass and hills are on the ground. 'The Data' text banner below.
The Install: tarot card featuring a construction scene with small people building many fantastical elements, building, and gadgets. 2 large eyes look over the scene in judgement. parts of the construction scene are on fire or smoking. "The Install" text banner below.

I set all of these up in a file and input it into a custom ComfyUI flow that used the Flux.1 model and some publicly available Tarot LoRa's that bent the style towards a look that I felt good about. I ran this all on a local machine and essentially had it running renders 24/7 on a fairly old machine (each render took about 5min on a 2080)

For almost every card in the final deck, I generated 20-40 variations/renders for each prompt (sometimes more) and then I curated the results down to my selects and favorites. I think I had about 2,000 images generated for the ~90 final ones. From there I designed a consistent frame and cropped each output into the frame. Just a few images needed some manual cleanup or enhancement, and most are shown raw. In some instances I tried to fix a few AI errors, but for the most part left in the warped limbs, the missing faces, and the unintelligible objects. I felt that leaving those artifacts in made the end result more authentic in a weird way.

Below are some examples of variations for The Install card:

Let's talk about the AI in the room

Obviously when we are still in the early days of using AI tools, I feel its necessary to recognize its role in this process and areas that may still feel problematic. For the open source model and lora's I used, I may not be able to trace back to all of the original datasets and understand the credits of the original artist's materials used to train the models. I do know that a number of the training images are based on the classic Rider Waite tarot images that are public domain, but there are other elements that may not be. If there is something in these that feel like infringement on someone's personal work, please reach out to discuss an amenable path to resolve.

I do feel that a project like this for a niche industry would be hard to self fund. I am not a talented illustrator, and to generate something like these ~90 images, I suspect it would take a talented artist weeks of work time at hundreds of dollars an hour. I would totally be open to having someone re-draw each of these, but I doubt the cost would be easily recouped. To that end, the costs associated with the sales of these cards are purely to cover the raw costs of production and shipping - I do not and have not intended to make a profit off of these (believe me, that ship has sailed). I consider them more of an art project/art object than a product.

Where could this go?

I had a lot of fun making these. Every day I was thinking of a few new concepts. I've been collecting them in a list and I'm sure people will start to send me them. For a brief period I also considered trying to make some sort of utility out of them like an exercise you could do with them or even a cooperative card game. I wasn't able to crack it yet, but I'm very curious what other people use them for.

Credits:

I had a number of conspirators and supporters on this project in the early stages: Lisa Rogers, Paula Ceballos, Dan Moore (thanks for the 3D renders!), Jaime Macías, Tristan Valencia, Aline Ridolfi and more!

Example Work:

For posterity, here is the copy from the sales page:

Experiential design and creative technology often feels like a kind of mysticism.

🎭 POST MORTEM: A DIVINATION DECK FOR THE DIGITAL AGE

In the neon-lit temples of creative technology, where algorithms dance with human imagination, a new form of divination has emerged. Welcome to Post Mortem – where the ancient art of tarot and oracle decks meet the chaotic reality of modern creative work.

Each of the 90 cards in this premium deck serves as a mirror to our digital zeitgeist, channeling the spirits of The Creative Technologist, The Scope Creep, and other powerful entities that shape our professional fate. All imagery was generated through arcane AI rituals (featuring a custom-crafted fusion of ComfyUI, Flux, and mystical tarot LoRa). These cards speak truth to the absurdity of our industry.

✨ PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION

Housed in a custom-designed sanctuary (a nifty box)
Materialized on premium card stock
Blessed with holographic/metallic edges that catch the light of your screen's glow

🔮 FEATURED ARCANA Glimpse into your future with cards like:

The Install (Will your deployment succeed?)
The Client (Bearer of impossible dreams)
The Layoff (The great restructuring)
The Kill Fee (Sweet salvation)
The IT Department (Keepers of the sacred passwords) ...and dozens more industrial omens

🎲 RITUAL APPLICATIONS

Divine your next career move through modified tarot readings
Summon team alignment through cooperative exercises
Build temples of cards to the gods of innovation
Mark your territory post-heist with a calling card
Simulate alternate realities through role play
Invent your own ceremonies (the spirits are flexible)

Whether you seek guidance, entertainment, or a satirical lens through which to process your creative technology trauma, Post Mortem stands ready to illuminate your path through the digital darkness.