Wow. I'm excited to have 3 of 111 deck that were printed. I feel like I own a piece of Theory11 history.
Anyways, I just wanted to say that I could understand why JB chose to do what he did. He didn't want to just settle for the way the monarchs were printed. He had a vision of the monarch deck and wants to keep that exact vision.
Imagine you had a logo in your mind for your business. Only problem is that you can't draw and you have to get that image down on paper. You find an artist and you tell them everything about the logo. When it's finished, it doesn't look exactly how it did in your mind, but it still looks ok. You still don't like it though because it's not exactly how you pictured it. Do you keep it or start over?
See how important it is?
If it's your creation, you don't want to just settle. You want everything to be exact.
I wouldn't think this would be a big deal anyway seeing is how Theory11 isn't pushing back the release date and he said the issue was rather minor. Honestly he didn't need to say a word and everything would go unnoticed.
Thanks for keeping us honest JB.
You hit the nail on the head. It's about the pursuit of perfection. These decks were not flawed, mangled, or damaged. They just weren't true to our exact, original vision. Any other company would have said "good enough" - we didn't. We were willing, and we forever will be, to pursue perfection, even if that means there will be complications, headaches, and frustrations along the way.
This certainly was frustrating. I lost a lot of sleep over it. But at the end of the day (or actually, at 6am in the morning) - we had to make sure the final result here was something GREAT, not just good. The same logic can and should be applied to everything you do. Follow your vision, follow your heart. Never settle.