Best app to use for large project

[raeha]

I’m interested in creating a deck similar to tarot or oracle cards. Because these decks have a very large number of cards (78 in tarot) it would be a considerable project to organize. I’d like the ability to be detailed in the design, but also easily set it up so design elements are shared, for example all card backs would be the same. And it’s also conceivable that I might make changes that I want linked so everything is updated at once, like maybe I’d have a common symbol across all corners or a title banner I wanted to alter everywhere.

I would love input about which app between Designer, Photo or Publisher would be best to set this up in so that it is organized and easy to navigate, and tips on how to structure it with boards, pages, layers etc. Thank you in advance for your suggestions!

[NotMyFault]

Probably Designer is best suited. It has the concepts of Artboards, and Symbols, and is best for vector based art.

Artboards allows you to create multiple areas where you can work on individual artwork, but keep everything within one file.

Symbols allow you to create one object, re-use it several times, and adjust the symbol content any time later, affecting all instances.

Publisher is page oriented, primary for books or other page-oriented documents.

Of course, in case you have purchased all 3 apps, you can switch any time between. 

Photo is focussed on pixel work, and has limited vector functions - probably the least suitable app.

[thomaso]

7 hours ago, raeha said:

for example all card backs would be the same.

So this layout is required only once. – I recommend to talk to your printer, not about the choice of the app but about how they should be setup for printing. For instance, it might be possible or preferred to layout all cards on 1 large page or several certain page sizes, each card including bleed and possibly with crop marks.

In addition to @NotMyFault's hints: Publisher has the option of Master Pages which may be used slightly similar to Symbols in AD, for instance for repeated elements (e.g. borders, backgrounds, texts) which may get altered properties (colours, text) on the document pages.

Also, this recent thread about split artboards in AD might be interesting:

(its idea is based on 1 large artboard covering all single sub-artboards whereas all contents may get created on this 1 large artboard but gets moved outside in the layers panel for export only)