A Game of Cards
The history of playing cards is a graphic design history. Over more than a thousand years, these two-dimensional designs, combining imagery and typography, have responded to cultural, political, economic, and technological changes and adapted to support card players. My Masters thesis, A Game of Cards, suggests that we can use playing cards as a model for graphic design historiography.
The project, which included an exhibition in April of 2025, was both a microhistory of playing cards and a deck of cards about that history.
Deliverables:
- Metahistorical “Bread, Jam, & Flower” playing cards
- Visual identity and package design for the Bread, Jam, & Flower playing card company
- Exhibition design and installation
- Documentary thesis book
The Bread, Jam, and Flower deck
Technology Medieval card makers applied color to their cards with stencils. To print 120 supersized card backs for my exhibition, I used a Risograph printer, which reproduces images by forcing ink through stencils: a fast and low-cost modern version of early card-making methods.
Illustration The Bread, Jam, and Flower deck’s illustrations are inspired by early English cards, like this 1750 jack of spades (right). My goal was to restore some of the strangeness and whimsy of these early playing cards.
Research Aces of spades are often the most ornate card in any deck, because they’re inspired by 18th-century British duty stamps. My deck includes a shout-out to convicted stamp-forgers and tax dodgers Richard Harding and Henry Wheeler.
Typography Playing cards used to have a lot more words on them. The Bread, Jam, and Flower deck’s typographic approach is inspired by designs like Naipes Heraclio Fournier’s late 19th-century Castilian pattern.