Year: December 2014/January 2015

Course: Visual Design Studio

For the last project of the course the professors asked us to design a playing card deck of 54 cards. I chose the theme of lines and surfaces, taking inspiration from the lessons of basic design and from the calendar “Imbroglio” designed by Jean Pierre Vitrac for Twentytwentyone. I was very fascinated by that calendar because the numbers look illegible all together but when you put a little circle on each number this one becomes clear.

My idea was very similar: I created a system of suits (four colours) and colors (surfaces and lines) where, if all the cards of the same colour are one beside the other in numerical order, they are quite illegible but, if each card is taken separately, they become comprehensible. I decided to choose surfaces and lines as colors because I could play on the ambiguity between what is figure and background. There is a structural stream in each suit where all the numbers follow the shape of the previous one.