National Park Playing Cards

An idea

It was early January when the idea first came to light. I wanted to work on a big personal project to start the year of 2018. Something that would take the entire year to complete.

Something that I’ve seen a lot of designers take on is the task of designing a deck of playing cards. This looked to me like a wonderful idea. Not only would it strengthen my design skills, but it’ll teach me other skills like how to manufacture, sell, and market a product. Not only did I want to design a custom card back; I wanted to design a custom case and card faces for every card.

Somehow, the idea of creating a US National Park themed playing card deck arose. There just so happened to be about 55 registered National Parks in the US, and getting the official gift shops to sell them would be a good long term goal.

The Process

I went straight to work. Designing each card face to feature a different National Park, I got about 3 completed every week. Along the way, I discovered my own unique style. Using minimal linework to depict memorable scenes from each park, the cards give off both a vintage and modern vibe at the same time.

The face cards (king, queen, jack, ace) have filled in circles with negative space lines to distinguish them from the other cards. The jokers depict Native American animals, also illustrated in the same minimal lifework style.

Each suit represents a different region in the United States. Diamonds represent parks in the Southwest, Spades represent the parks in the Northwest, Clubs represented the East, and Hearts, the South.

Additionally, the card values are sorted by park popularity, with ace featuring the most visited parks, and 2 featuring the least visited parks.

With all the design elements ready, including the foil tuckbox, card faces, and card backs, I put the project up on Kickstarter, where I almost tripled my funding goal of $2500. You can check it out here.

Within months, my first batch of playing cards were sold out.

Retail

My main strategy was to target small boutique stores as well as official National Park gift shops to resell my decks. This deck would be best appreciated as a collector’s item, or as a souvenir from a US National Park.