First Look: DYNASTY Playing Cards by Brendan Hong

[Update] DYNASTY Playing Cards are now LIVE on Kickstarter! Don't miss out!

Inspired by his culture and heritage, Brendan Hong brings his unique style to his first independent project, DYNASTY. Some may not recognize the name immediately, but Brendan is the designer behind the extremely popular HIVE series which was released by Kings Wild Project. DYNASTY is a gorgeous deck of cards inspired by various Chinese elements in Brendan’s own delightful style.

We asked Brendan about the inspiration behind the DYNASTY playing cards,

I've always wanted to create a deck of playing cards inspired by my culture and heritage. I have taken various Chinese elements and combined it with the traditional style of playing cards (such as the suicide king and the one-eyed jacks, etc) so it's a fusion of both to make something completely unique and infused with my style of illustration.

There are two different decks in this series: the Jade Green (unlimited) deck and the premium Imperial Red deck (limited to only 1000 decks). Both decks with their own unique elements will appeal to the casual card players as well as collectors.

Court Cards for the Jade Green deck

The Jade Green deck features fully custom cards with unique Jokers, Courts and Ace of Spaces and Matte stock tuck featuring foil and interior printing.

Court Cards for the Imperial Red deck

The premium Imperial Red deck features fully custom cards with 2 unique Jokers, Courts with unique border design, fully illustrated Aces. premium black matte stock tuck featuring foil, embossing and interior foiling and individually numbered seals.

Both decks will be printed by the Expert Playing Card Co. on their Classic Finish card stock.

[Update] DYNASTY Playing Cards are now LIVE on Kickstarter! Don't miss out!

Pledge starts from CAD$14 (~USD$10) and there will be Early Bird reward tiers available. DYNASTY is set to launch on Sunday, 6th March at 1:00PM EST on Kickstarter.

Deck View: Flesh & Bones Playing Cards

Mythical. Geometric. Hand-drawn.

Originally funded on Deckstarter, Flesh & Bones is a delightful deck that features detailed, hand-drawn illustrations based on mythical creatures and ancient gods. Created by Dual Originals which comprises of Marylou & Chris Biron, a London-based duo who's passionate about the weird and wonderful and wanted to express their take on it through this deck.

The Flesh & Bones tuck and back designs are clean and precise, consisting of illusional line patterns and geometric shapes. This contrasting design methodology gives the deck a unique overall look & feel and is sure to catch a few eyes. Also, each suit in the deck is based on a different theme, which determines which creatures are featured on the court cards. For example, the diamonds theme is water and the court cards contain imagery of a Kraken, a Mermaid and a Hydra.

There’s a lot more to this deck than what first meets the eye and you need to study them to find all the little details that the team at Dual Originals have put in. Available from jpgamesltd.co.uk.

First Look: Ravn Playing Cards by Caroline Ravn designed by Stockholm17

[Update] RAVN Playing Cards are now LIVE on Kickstarter! Don't miss out!

We are honoured once again to have a guest post by Lorenzo Gaggiotti of Stockholm17, creator of stunning playing card decks such as Requiem, Heretic, No.17 and Le Chat Rouge. In this exclusive first look, Lorenzo shares with us about collaborating with Caroline Ravn, the challenge behind designing the Ravn Playing Cards and the creative process behind the deck. Enjoy! 

Caroline Ravn and I teamed up just after summer to create her deck. I usually do not take freelance work, but I wanted to do an experiment and try a collaboration with a magician from Sweden. Living in the same country, it is easier to communicate and work. The deal was simple: I do the design and I follow the production, Caroline does the promotion and the public relations.

Ravn Playing Cards was a challenge because it is hard to make something simple and at the same time attractive. We wanted to keep the classic look because while performing magic tricks it is important to have a standard unsuspicious deck of playing cards. I made a dozen of back design proposals and it took me 2 months just on the back. Balance, contrast and graphics had to fit our goal.

The faces are quite standard, but I wanted to improve the hands and the faces of the Jacks, Queens and Kings. Also, I wanted to make elegant and intriguing jokers, and an attractive Ace of Spades. I worked a lot on the ambigram for the tuck, it turned out very nice and pretty symmetrical.

Overall, Ravn Playing Cards is a semi-custom deck design to be beautiful in its simplicity, great to perform magic tricks, or cardistry, or just some poker at the green table.

The Kickstarter campaign will start in 2 or 3 weeks, and the plan is to have 2 colors: crimson red and petrol green. As for add-ons we are planning a 1.5" coin, and a mini-deck. As always, it depends on how the campaign goes. We will try and keep prices as low as possible.

[Update] RAVN Playing Cards are now LIVE on Kickstarter! Don't miss out!


This exclusive guest post is written by Lorenzo of Stockholm17 for Kardify. No part of this article can be reproduced without written permission from the author. You can check out Lorenzo's work online at stockholm17.com

First Look: TELIAD by Passione Playing Cards

[Update] TELIAD Playing Cards now LIVE on Kickstarter!

TELIAD is the upcoming project from the team at Passione Playing Cards. Passione brings different artists and graphic designers together on a project. For TELIAD, the artwork are done by several talented artists:
+ Federico Bollo for the core concepts, author of the original drawings & colors of TELIAD Heren;
+ Maurizio Toccafondi (Colored Noise) as the art director of the whole project, he personally designed TELIAD Alfrin starting from Bollo’s work and the concept behind TELIAD dùr;
+ Jari di Benedetto author of the calligraphic work on the three main writings: TELIAD Heren, Alfrin and dùr (pictured above);
+ Andrea Aste who created the awesome TELIAD teaser and Kickstarter video and gave feedbacks and advices through the entire project.

TELIAD Heren, TELIAD Alfrin and the stretch goal TELIAD dùr are three parts of the fantasy universe of TELIAD. For this first look, we will look at TELIAD Alfrin, the limited version of TELIAD. Here is Riccardo Conturbia to tell us more about the TELIAD Alfrin,

TELIAD Alfrin will be available from the beginning of the campaign and will feature two different metallic inks on the cards with 100% new illustrations. While the unlimited Teliad Heren deck has humans, orcs, dwarfes and elves as court cards, Alfrin has Rohan knights as the spades, instead of orcs. Alfrin is the “immortal”, “eternal” or “heavenly” version of Teliad and, therefore, it can’t have orcs. 

We asked Riccardo to tell us about what is so special about the TELIAD tuck cases,

We are working with the renowned Italian company in the paper industry: Fedrigoni, to bring cool new materials for the TELIAD tuck cases. TELIAD will be printed by Legends Playing Card Co and are already testing the new papers and new solutions.  We hope you’ll like our work and our vision.

We want to thank Riccardo and the team from Passione for thier insight into TELIAD. Make sure you mark your calendars for the Kickstarter launch on February 29th.

[Update] TELIAD Playing Cards now LIVE on Kickstarter!


To keep up to date with the TELIAD Playing Cards, follow Passione Playing Cards on Facebook.