Check Out This Gorgeous Set of Photography-Inspired Playing Cards

With the goal of combining clean graphic design and a love for photography together into a playing card, the Diamon Playing Cards company has created the Shooters playing cards.

Diamon says that the deck is a collaboration piece between it and Matt Fujiwara. The cards themselves are covered in icons and imagery that photographers will know but done in a way where the idea wasn’t to just put as much information as they could onto a card. There is some nice design aesthetic at play here despite how busy it was possible to make the graphics.

The “tuck,” otherwise known as the cardboard box that the cards are stored in, is designed to look like a certain line of camera lenses (it is very reminiscent of Canon optics) but Diamon says that they hope it will appeal to all forms of photographers, from smartphone shooters to those who enjoy full-size cameras.

“In designing the back of the cards, we went with the icons that can be found and recognized by any camera owner or operator,” Diamon writes. “Classic icons like, battery level display, settings, brightness, flash, or self-timer, just to name a few.”

The red line around the top of the tuck mimics Canon’s professional line of L-series lenses, which denote the higher-quality premium glass.

“The red border was created to keep that ‘red ring’ theme throughout the deck,” the company continues. “Other than the classic green and yellow font colors commonly found on the red ring lens, we wanted the deck to be minimal in color, using only gray, white, red, and black.”

The court cards – Jack through Ace – retain the classic look but are splashed with camera icons. The Joker card is styled after a camera’s main mode dial.

“All four aces have exploded pips with the cross-hair in the center. The Ace of Spades design was meant to look like what you would normally see on a camera display. The rest of the cards bare your standard pips and indices,” Diamon explains.

The cards are available in two styles: standard black and collector’s edition white. The standard black cards are available for 9 euro (~$10.80) and don’t feature any metallic or foil paper. The slightly more expensive collector’s edition is limited to 1000 decks for 14 euro (~16.80) and includes the use of red metallic ink on the black design and the faces of the cards and a notable design boost to the tuck: a matte white finish, a red and black hot foil stamped design, and an embossed texture that mimics the feel of the ridges on the focus ring of a lens.

There are other add-ons available such as a carrying case for the decks and a collectible coin.

At the time of publication, the Kickstarter had been fully funded and Diamon expects to ship finished decks to backers by May of this year. You can peruse all the options and see more images on the company’s Kickstarter page.

As always, remember that Kickstarter is not a pre-order service. Do your research and back with caution.

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