5 Things You Didn't Know About Club Pitch V2 Playing Cards

CLUB PITCH Playing Cards are an intriguing deck. They are minimal, yet intricate. Bold, yet still traditional. The deck is a collaboration between card enthusiasts, Duane Cardinez, and Pitch, a full-service advertising agency in Culver City, CA. It started as an identity exploration, manifested into a passion project.

Unfortunately, Duane’s first attempt was unsuccessful. He then re-launched the Kickstarter campaign, CLUB PITCH V2 Playing Cards last week. In just over a week, the deck is 146% funded and with 17 days remaining (at the time of writing).

Backers will notice some enhancement to ensure a more fruitful campaign and an even better-finished product. So for this next round, the team revamped the entire design from the inside out. New materials. More effective design. A whole new masterpiece, suitable for cardists, gamblers and card collectors an unmatched experience that respects tradition and rewards the imagination.

Here are 5 things you didn’t know about Club Pitch V2 playing cards:

1. Started as a Design Experiment

Ad agencies don’t normally design cards; until now. What started as an internal project to showcase a brand refresh for a small agency in Los Angeles, became much more. Duane told Kardify, “The original intent was to send branded playing cards as gifts to our clients/partners. However, the idea got bigger and I was able to talk the executives into making a high-quality deck available to card collectors outside our bubble. The experiment had 2 challenges. The first was to try and only use Pitch’s 3 core colors: jade green, black and white. That was the biggest challenge since traditional cards have red as an indicator for hearts and diamonds. The second was to flip the typical idea of a card front and back. The back is subdued and the front showcases a loud hit of Pitch’s signature green.”

2. Club Pitch is a Symbolic Representation

“Club Pitch isn’t necessarily a dance hall where we do the milly rock. The club is a foliage- shaped pip that, in this case, resembles a life-sized sculpture of a California Live Oak tree in the middle of our office floor. Needless to say, we are embracing the Fresh & Growing aspect of our culture. You will see this theme reinforced by the tangram tree logo on the seal. A signature logo we use on some of our office paraphernalia.”

3. You Can Literally Use the Map to Find Our Office

The asymmetric green line on the back of the Club Pitch cards is actually Venice Boulevard, one of the main LA streets connecting the east to west. The sides of the double backer are not an exact mirror image of each other. This was done deliberately because one side is the continuation of the other. The destination can be found on the inside of the tuck. A brave and curious soul could essentially pull apart the tuck and literally travel from Mid-City to Culver City where Pitch is located.

4. The Cards are an Ode to the Odd

“Even though the back is a 1-way design, we still altered the 6 and 8 card pip orientation so that they are perfectly symmetrical. Oh, the irony. Odd cards single out the odd pip by showcasing the skeleton of how the pip was created. The diamonds, which is a symmetrical shape, are the only exception and only have a special pip on the number 7 card. Club Pitch cards deceivingly appear to be minimal but are rich in detail to avid collectors.”

5. By Request

“The original intent of the first Club Pitch launch was that if it didn’t reach its goal, we would simply make a limited run through the online service Make Playing Cards. However, I got so many direct messages asking where were their cards and if I would plan on relaunching, that I decided to comply. I realized that we had a minimal deck with a complex tuck that was not translated well through the prototype. The result was a simple-looking deck that was priced like an elaborate deck. I re-envisioned the tuck to showcase a more modern design that didn’t rely on embossing and metallic ink. Especially something as hard to portray as black metallic ink on a matte black tuck. The solution was to represent a product as close to the final product as possible. Kickstarter is all about show, don’t tell.”