20 Decks of designer playing cards to inspire, astound and make you drool

This collection of playing cards have been created by groups, individuals, professional artists, and for student projects. All of them have something in common, these aren’t just ordinary playing cards.

Suit Up Artists playing Cards is a great collaboration between many Australian artists to produce a stunning deck. With an emphasis on street art, comic and illustration the stylish cards sold out relatively quickly, however prints of most are still available.

Suit Up artist playing cards

Suit Up artist playing cards

The Joker Playing Card Deck by Binth is a stylish black, white & red deck.

Joker playing card deck

Joker playing card deck

This stunning black deck by Goody Grams is made by printing a spot UV varnish over black card, making each card seem lush and expensive. the intricate designs of the face cards also adds another dimension to this extraordinary deck.

Goody Grams black card deck

Goody Grams black card deck

Typefaces web designer playing cards are well, playing cards with web designers faces on. 20 web designers stylized mug-shots adorn this top trump style card deck.

Typefaces web designer cards

Typefaces web designer cards

I wont lie to you, lascivious make underwear, and pretty damn sexy underwear at that. however they have also produced two equally sexy decks of cards. Word of warning, these may not be entirely work safe.

lascivious designer card deck package

lascivious designer playing cards

Lets run with our NSFW theme a little more and admire these Perverted Playing Cards by Elena Dolgova. The characters depicted show a more perverted side in their mirrored portraits.

perverted playing cards

perverted playing cards

Custom 52 is a community where artists design individual cards, the best of which are then created into decks and sold. They currently have 2 decks in store, Cycle II & III and are collecting submissions for Cycle IV. While the overall quality of all submission may not be top notch, there are some quality designs there.

custom 52 cards cycle II

custom 52 cards cycle III

The Black Rock Collective Have produced a stunning set of cards, where each artist has produced at least 1 (36 artists, 54 cards) of the full deck, available to buy at $20.00 and selling out fast.

black rock collective card deck

black rock collective card deck

Shelter is a charity dedicated to housing the homeless, and have produced a deck of 53 cards with artists such as Damien Hirst, Vivienne Westwood & Sir Terence Conran. The Shelter House of Cards deck comes in at 70 GBP, and while it might be the most expensive set of playing cards you’ll ever buy, it also might be the most worthwhile.

Shelter house of cards

Shelter house of cards

The community at Hum Hum are stacking up a really nice looking designer deck, with many unique and well crafted cards. A really nice collaboration.

humhum playing cards

humhum playing cards

Designed by Si Scott for Dan & Dave, the Smoke & Mirrors v.4 // Green Edition is a simple and beautiful deck for tricks and flourishes. Unfortunatly at the time of writing, this deck has sol out, better keep an eye out for V.5.

Silver Deck available from The Future Perfect. Hard to tell what they look like in the flash as this is the only image I could find. Looks like card with a silver foil finish, and not bad at all for the price.

Silver playing cards

Hat Trick designed a very stylish typography based deck, using typography exclusively to produce the design for each card. A PDF containing images of all the cards is available at the website.

Portuguese site Ps.2 has created this typographic card game of concentration. Consisting of 20 pairs of cards each pair depicting an individual type family. They made 300 numbered copies as gifts, lovely.

Typographic concentration card game 01

Typographic concentration card game 01

These beautifully styled cards by Thorbjörn Ingason feature Nordic Gods instead of the traditional kings and queens. They were created for for IcelandAir, and I imagine many a set pocketed by travelers.

Iceland Air playing cards

Iceland Air playing cards

Iceland Air playing cards

Michael Lam brings the Graphos Card Deck to the table. With a heavy emphasis on typography, each card tells a unique story of a specific area or focus in type.

Graphos card deck

Graphos card deck

Graphos card deck

The Oversized Typography Cards by Rachel Poulin are designed entirely with type. Even the suit symbols are made with lettering.

Cicero oversized typography cards

Cicero oversized typography cards

The Cape Town playing cards from Clement de Bruin, with their used and abused appearance would make a fantastic deck from these two examples.

Cape town playing cards

Cape town playing cards

Creating a deck of cards is a tough job to do solo, but can produce some stunning results when done right. This kinda project lends it’s self to a collaboration of artists and designers, and some of the most unique decks listed here are now rare and expensive collectors items.

If you know of any more worthy designer decks, share them with us!