A small publishing company from the most western part of Germany, “Verlag um die Ecke“ (roughly translated from German into English as “Publisher around the corner“), which specializes on family magazines and different guides decided to create some side project devoted to playing cards. The team of three people – publisher, graphic designer and illustrator – launched a custom deck of playing cards called “Poker Faces”.
Poker Faces playing cards were designed for nonconservative poker players with developed sense of humor. “Poker face”, also known as a blank expression, is a special term for poker which means a facial expression characterized by neutral positioning of the facial features, implying a lack of strong emotion. As you can see, quite quirky and bizarre characters of this deck are far away from a lack of strong emotions 🙂 While the Jack of Spades is just thinking about his possible victim, ladies mercilessly are shooting flirtatious glances at everyone. And think twice before surprise the Jack of Diamonds by your Royal Flush 😉
“Tough guys and loose women, Bartenders, Mafia Brides and Sailors! In a POKER FACES poker hand, the underworld and harbor romance meet. Each of the four colors represents an “industry”: clubs is maritime, spades is organized crime, the pimps and alley cats romp around with hearts, and in the diamond pub, everyone is sitting at the bar.” ~ Verlag um die Ecke
The contrast was intentional. The creators wanted to have professional deck for poker with some ironical twist. I have to admit that they did what they wanted.
All drawings are the work of the Aachen-based illustrator Alex Elsen.
PLAYING CARDS + ART = COLLECTING 