Azalea Card Deck

As a passion project, I designed a custom, branded deck of cards and tuck box that can also act as a business card for my target audience: potential employers and people within the graphic design industry. Not only is it a leave-behind, but it is also a fully-functional, reusable deck for a game of cards. This deck of cards is particularly memorable as a leave-behind because it showcases a snapshot of my design style and my capabilities as a designer.

Year

2020

Passion Project

Illustration
Typography
Print
Package Design

After being inspired by Disney’s illustration style, I wanted to create a card deck where the suits were composed of families where each "Jack" has features from his parents, the King and Queen. The scope of the project ended up including: illustrations for the King, Queen, and Jack for each suit of the four suits, two Jokers, illustrations for each of the suit symbols, a pattern for the tuck box and back of each card, a print-ready tuck-box design, and print ready cards.

Azalea Creative Studio's logo on a navy background.

Azalea Deck

Azalea Creative Studio was the former name that I worked under as a graphic designer. At the time that I was creating this project, I was still operating under that name, and so the card deck was designed to act as a gift or memorable leave-behind or a gift to help the name "Azalea Creative Studio" stay more firmly in the user's mind.

Selected conceptual sketches

Conceptual sketches for the Azalea Deck.
Azalea card deck colour swatches.

Sketches & Colours

After brainstorming several different styles of illustration, I decided to reference and learn from Disney's style of illustrations. Because I wanted the Jacks to carry across elements from the King and Queen of the same suite, I discovered very quickly that a large colour palette was necessary in order to create elements were each unique to their suite.

Sketches & Colours

After brainstorming several different styles of illustration, I decided to reference and learn from Disney's style of illustrations. Because I wanted the Jacks to carry across elements from the King and Queen of the same suite, I discovered very quickly that a large colour palette was necessary in order to create elements were each unique to their suite.

A mockup of the Azalea Deck and tuck box.
A mockup of the Azalea Deck's King of clubs and card deck.
A mockup of the Azalea Deck's King, Queen, and Jack of hearts.
A mockup of the Azalea Deck's King, Queen, and Jack of spades.
A mockup of the Azalea Deck's King, Queen, and Jack of clubs.
A mockup of the Azalea Deck's King, Queen, and Jack of diamonds.
A mockup of the Azalea Deck's cards.
A mockup of the Azalea Deck's Joker.

Pattern & Tuckbox

To carry the design details across each of the pieces of the deck, I put together a pattern made up of all of the different Jacks, Queens, and Kings. However, all of the original colours made the pattern overwhelming to look at. Colorizing the illustrations solved this issue, and the pattern was then applied to the tuck box and backs of each card.
A mockup of the Azalea Deck's pattern.
A mockup of the Azalea Deck's cards and tuck box.
The template for the Azalea Deck's tuck box.
A mockup of the Azalea Deck's cards and tuck box.

Original Typeface

When initially brainstorming the type of style, message, and design to carry across, I had several ideas for what typeface would be used to indicate the value of each card. Several years ago I had created a typeface 一 a process that I loved despite how long it took. In discovering that I had an additional way to make the card deck entirely unique, I used my original typeface on the card deck and was able to apply it in a design for the first time!
The original glyphs and numbers from the typeface used for the Azalea Deck.
The original uppercase and lowercase letters from the typeface used for the Azalea Deck.

This passion project took much longer than I had originally anticipated, though I really did enjoy the process. I ran into challenges in ensuring unity between the illustrations, choosing a large colour palette, and deciding on what to put on the back of each card. I am satisfied with the final result though, and in the future, plan to have it printed as a physical card deck!

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