A Chat with Frank Lawrence of The Vibrating Tarot

This unique tarot deck features over 300 pleasure products from over 140 brands.

Frank Lawrence with a prototype of his Vibrating Tarot deck

Disclaimer: this post contains an affiliate link for Crave pleasure jewelry. If you purchase a product using the link used in this post, I will receive a percentage of sales. I strongly encourage you to do so, as affiliate revenue enables me to spend more time creating content for this blog! That said, I did not receive compensation for including any of the brands or products mentioned in this post.

I first met Canadian designer and Tarot enthusiast Frank Lawrence at the 2024 Altitude Intimates show in Las Vegas.

While browsing the We-Vibe booth, I discovered there was a fellow tarot card reader in attendance, one who had created a pleasure product themed tarot deck! I was intrigued, and signed up for a reading. When finally I met Frank, I was caught off guard by his unconventional proposition: he wanted ME to read for him using the deck he had designed, which is loosely inspired by the Rider Waite Smith deck. It was his clever way of UI testing the deck: could a random tarot reader (who had never seen the deck before) give a competent reading with it? The answer was yes! I think it had something to do with me being an experienced reader, but it’s also an awesome deck.

This deck uses the background imagery of the popular Rider Waite Smith as a backdrop for Frank’s clever designs that “license the use of images of over 300 different pleasure products from over 140 sexual wellness brands, big and small, representing over 15 countries worldwide.”

The finished deck was 100% funded within the first 24 hours of it’s crowdfunding campaign on May 1st. You can pledge through May 22nd to get your own deck, and receive a 10% discount on your purchase by using this link:

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/pallor-publishing/vibrating-tarot/pledge_levels/18230

The standard edition starts at C$54 (about $38 USD), and there are various deluxe options leading up to the “Whip Level” at C$790 ($555 USD), which includes a beautiful paracord whip!

Read on to learn more about Frank and the process by which he created this unique deck.

What was the first tarot deck you ever used? What is your favorite deck now (other than your own)?

The first Tarot deck I ever used was the Rider Waite Smith (RWS) Tarot deck, which is the springboard for hundreds of different Tarot decks in today’s culture, including our Vibrating Tarot. In 2021, while doing research on the copyright/public domain status of RWS, I reached out to current publisher of the RWS deck, US Games, and received the blessing of their VP to develop Vibrating Tarot, with the following quote:

“Good luck with it!” –Bobby Bensaid, US Games Systems.

The Hermetic Tarot by Godfrey Dowson is my favourite [traditional] deck. It has a unique universe that I do not fully understand and I love to get lost in its layers.

Images from The Hermetic Tarot by Godfrey Dowson

Of the contemporary Tarot designers, I adore the themes of Claire Goodchild’s Memento Mori, the striking visuals of Mr Friborg’s Tarrochi, and the subject matter found within most of Travis McHenry’s work. Baroque Publishing will be crowdfunding their Naked Truth Tarot – Midnight Edition, while we at Pallor Publishing crowdfund the Vibrating Tarot deck. Pledge towards both of our projects during the crowdfunder and receive a free gift from both of us.

What makes Vibrating Tarot different than your average gimmicky “novelty” tarot deck?

Vibrating Tarot grabs people’s attention with its subject matter but in order to be a
worthwhile project it must leverage the extensive depth and meaning that has been built into it.

Every Tarot deck has its own story and it’s impossible to compare one deck to another without taking into account a variety of factors. Many Tarot decks are manufactured by large corporations that just want to cash in on their intellectual property and the current uptick in the popularity of Tarot. Then there are incredibly unique and well-designed decks made by indie creators who care deeply about the Tarot tradition they are working within and the direction of the artwork they are bringing to the world.

When it comes to Vibrating Tarot, I often feel that a million other people must have had the idea for a pleasure product themed Tarot deck, but no one out there dedicated the time or energy to working it all out and building bridges with all the applicable brands in order to get their formal permissions to move forward using their imagery, and bringing an entire body of work to fruition.

If someone else had done all the work that I did, and was able to present their version of a pleasure product themed Tarot deck, I wonder how different their deck would look from the one I’ve designed. What would their motivations have been? What would it have looked like? How would it have been presented?

These are the questions I ask myself when I compare Vibrating Tarot with other decks. It’s not so much whether the deck is a novelty or not, but rather, it’s about what the designer and publisher is saying with their entire package and presentation.

Vibrating Tarot is small and mighty. Like the We-Vibe Chorus, or like Vesper by CRAVE. It comes in a small box but the package is enormous. Like Vesper, the product is small but it unfolds to encompass the world. Like Chorus, the capabilities and possibilities that the product offers is beyond people’s ability to understand it at first grasp. There are details about the product that people will continue to discover for years to come. The more you interact with it, the more connections you’ll make, and the more you’ll see. I’ve placed all of the pleasure products on specific cards that speak to the nature of the product and vice versa. Nothing was placed randomly or without a great deal of reason.

The different products in this industry all do different things in different ways. Some vibrate, rotate, spin, thrust, or suck. Some are carved out of wood, poured from silicone, formed from metal, blown from glass, or molded from clay. Rope, restraints, whips, paddles, feathers, blindfolds, and all kinds of related items are present. And all kinds of personal lubricants are embraced, including water based, silicone based, oil based, and hybrids. When it comes to lube, some are compatible with some products and not others. So on each card, I had to ask myself, what combinations am I using, are they compatible, or not compatible, why or why not, what am I saying with the pairings I’ve made, and how does it relate to the root meaning of the card?

Vibrating Tarot is a fusion of art and education. It’s basically a catalogue of contemporary pleasure products, and I hope that people dive in and discover new products, new combinations, new insights, and new ideas to explore. It has always been my job to connect new customers and clients to new brands and retailers.

In terms of presentation and first impressions, Vibrating Tarot must be designed to be an elegant product if it is to stand beside the world’s finest pleasure products. We are planning on an 80 card Tarot deck printed on premium card stock from one of the world’s leading Tarot manufacturing companies. The deck of cards will have silver reflective edges, and comes with a 120 page perfect bound guidebook, with a foreword written by an icon and leader of the pleasure product industry.

The product will lean into a high-end visual appearance and stature with the overall package, housed in a clean, crisp vertical standing 2-Piece Rigid Box with a fully removable lid, showcasing images of a few key cards wrapping around the box.

A limited Waterproof Edition will also be on offer, for those inclined to bring the cards into the tub or into the rain.

What is your background as an artist and tarot enthusiast? What inspired you to shift from creating media about black and white movies to a vibrant colorful tarot deck?

My background as a multifaceted artist has its roots in visual art, working through illustration, videography, photography and graphic design. I attended York University and graduated in 2011 with a Bachelor of Design, specializing in print design and typography. As a typographer, I mainly focus on book design as a way to express myself on the printed page. I named my publishing company Pallor Publishing as a metaphor for the lack of colour inherently found when one looks at black text on a white background, as well as to hint at the subject matter the company explores, which exists at the cross roads of design and divination.

Starting in 2013, I published an annual black and white magazine which featured public domain horror scripts as well as short stories, poetry, and art from local talent. In 2019, I published a typography art book called boomDEAD, A Collection of Old-Time Radio’s Most Unusually Haunted Scripts.

Black and White Imagery from Pallor Press

I started developing Vibrating Tarot in 2020 and have had to embrace a whole new direction, which was working with colour in order to achieve the look the project needed. I set out to learn how to layer different colours together to generate the colour palette I used for Vibrating Tarot. With this in mind, you’ll find that Vibrating Tarot brings a bit more of a muted look to some of the original colours, which can look artificial. It works hard to bring depth and texture to the colour in order to reinvent the Tarot card backgrounds, which address the decades-old criticism of the original RWS colour palette.

This project was the first time I used Procreate to put a project together. Vibrating Tarot’s artwork is derived from a combination of illustration and photography, and I needed to work in a new kind of digital environment in order to really get in there and manipulate the images the way that was required. It was a learning experience, one that has evolved my work and my capabilities a great deal. We must all step outside of our comfort zone in order to evolve.

What has been the reception from pleasure product companies? Were any of them reluctant to be included?

Vibrating Tarot features over 300 unique pleasure products, officially licensed by over 140 different sexual wellness brands. In order to reach those numbers, I’ve had to contact well over 200 different brands, so yes, more than a few brands have declined to join us on this journey for one reason or another.

There were times when I fell in love with certain designs that I had put together, then when it came time to ask the featured brands for their permission, and a signature on a licensing agreement, it was challenging to navigate that terrain. Sometimes we would communicate for years only for the collaboration to fall through. But no matter what happened, no matter how I was challenged along the way, no matter what changes I had to make that were uncomfortable for me to have to make, it always resulted in better designs in the end. Everything had to happen exactly how it did or we’d have a different looking project on our hands.

Patience and persistence was the name of this long game. I dedicated years to courting some of the brands that are involved in Vibrating Tarot, and it was a slow drip of progress for years on end. I sent thousands of emails. I always stayed optimistic. A lot of progress came in the first and last years of development. It took as long as it took and could not have unfolded in any other way. If I had to publish it even a year earlier, it would have looked completely different. If I had taken another approach, it would not have worked out.

Every brand was its own journey. I never emailed anyone as a group, they were all individual relationships that I built over the course of five years. Some brands really made me work for it. I travelled to California, Tennessee, and Nevada (twice), just to track down certain brands, to get in front of them, to display firsthand my passion and dedication, and to progress the conversations we needed to have in order to secure a licensing agreement signature.

Some brands made the job an absolute dream come true. Ken Herskovitz from Magic Wand, who has been a mentor to me, was the first really big name to put faith behind the project and support us by allowing us to officially license the use of their brand’s intellectual property. Once Magic Wand signed, many of the other brands saw this as significant sign of social proof and decided to get involved as well.

Cheri Curry, from Tantus, a friend and a confidant, has always been there to have my back in many significant ways. We all owe a great debt to her for the behind-the-scenes work that she did, and continues to do, on our behalf. Without her, we’d have a different looking project.

Stephanie Ingram from Lovehoney Group had the foresight to see that a public appearance was warranted and debuted me as an industry member at ANME in January 2024, and at Altitude in February 2024. This opportunity allowed me the ability to meet this industry face-to-face and was responsible for a swelling of progress.

Cheryl Sloane form überlube invited me back to the trade shows as a guest of überlube, allowing me to attend the two above-mentioned shows with in 2025, a pivotal time for us as we crowdfund, take pre-orders, and produce the Tarot deck.

Narcissa from Mercy Whips and Andrew Duke from Stitchin’ Wolf Leatherworks each made custom products for the Tarot deck and allowed us to sell them in the crowdfunding campaign to help raise money for our project.

It’s been an amazing and uplifting journey. The outpouring of support has been amazing, I hope it will also be the key to our success.

Do you have a “favorite” card or cards in this deck, and why? Were there any cards that were especially challenging to conceive or create?

My “favourite” Vibrating Tarot cards have risen to this status for both objective and subjective reasons. I love the Lovers card because that was the inception of the whole project. The vision of this card was revealed to me in a dream, and the design is literally a dream come true. I tried to design the Lovers card exactly as I saw it in my dream, which is a meaningful thing for me to have accomplished.

The World card is another of my favourites because as soon as Magic Wand had officially signed with us, I felt that nothing could possibly stand in our way. I love The Hanging Vibe card because I adore its simplicity, its elegance, and its refinement. It was a natural solution for the design challenge. I also like the Seven of Rope and the Two of Plugs because of the breakthroughs I had when challenged with the specific design parameters.

The Ace cards are also a high point for me because I’m proud of the replacements I’ve given to the traditional suits. Wands is replaced with long lengths of Rope, Cups is replaced with Lube where I’m able to show a variety of different lubricant brands, Swords is replaced by Whips and all kinds of impact instruments, and Pentacles is replaced by Plugs of all varieties made from glass, metal, silicone, and wood.

The Strength card is a very popular one because the njoy Pure Wand was the most requested product in the entire Tarot deck. Every time I reached out to my audience to ask for their recommendations and suggestions on products to include in the deck, the same answer kept coming back again and again, “Pure Wand.” I feel that I had a very straightforward objective to make that design come to fruition, and I feel proud to have delivered it to everyone who was calling for it.

The most challenging cards to design were the Devil, Death, Judgement, the 9 and 10 of Whips—but all for different reasons. It always seemed like the darker cards gave me the most trouble. The Court Cards were very challenging as well because I needed to gather a whole community of products together around a much larger item in order to symbolize the hierarchical relationships between the main figure and the items they carry, like the rings, broaches, orbs, and sceptres, that all appear on the traditional cards. The Queens came together rather quickly, while the Kings were a little more stubborn. Nearly all the Knights put up a duel that lasted many years. The cards all taught me a great deal about the industry, about communication, community, and about my own relentless persistence, for better or worse.

The story of the production of Vibrating Tarot is that I am only the vessel by which this project has made itself known. The above-mentioned brands, and all the brands involved in this project, laid the groundwork throughout their years. They were responsible for putting themselves in the Tarot deck, exactly where they were all supposed to be, as a result of decades of research, development, marketing, and community involvement. I am merely the one who uncovered it all in the form of a Tarot deck for everyone to see.

The world’s ideas are all just out there hanging in the air. They’re like radio signals. One must know how to tap into this collective frequency in order to catch an idea. David Lynch describes it as being like fishing. You must be cognizant of the line you cast out into the water. If you go fishing in shallow waters, you will catch small fish. If you venture into deeper waters, it can be scary and confront you with greater challenges, but you will catch bigger fish. Always know the good ideas from the bad ones. Never follow through with bad ideas, just throw them back into the ether. Always follow through with a good ideas, take them in, spend time with them, figure them out. It’ll always be worth it. The day you cast a line out into the universe and catch a good idea is always a beautiful day.

Thank you Frank for taking the time to share your creative process with my readers!

Get your Vibrating Tarot Deck for 10% off using this link, and stay tuned for a livestream with Frank sometime soon!