This brief asked for a custom 52-card deck of playing cards. My chosen design draws heavy inspiration from Wes Anderson’s classic film The Grand Budapest Hotel, in particular the iconic fictional bakery ‘Mendls’.

My ultimate goal was to create a classic card deck that felt like it could exist within the realms of the film. As such, each face design was based heavily on the classic face cards design, taking recogniseable elements of each figure such as line style, face shape, and clothing. Most importantly to recreating Wes Anderson’s style, I sketched each character facing straight forwards. I ensured that each card was horizontally and vertically symmetrical, with only some minor and natural asymmetries. This meant simplifying some elements of clothing, and giving each figure new poses. The Joker design is the most overt nod to The Grand Budapest Hotel, and features the Courtesan au Chocolat- a three-tiered stack of French religieuse pastries.

Futura was the obvious choice of typeface for this set for its abundant use in Wes Anderson’s films. Each suit symbol is “homemade”: most notably, the diamond suit symbol is deliberately square to accentuate its symmetry. Colours used are in direct reference to those used by the in-film bakery’s packaging. Also a nod to the bakery inspiration is the ‘ingredients’ list on the back of the packaging, and the allergen warning on the bottom of each box.

Tools:

Adobe Illustrator, Procreate for the iPad