Altered World Playing Cards is an optical illusion-themed deck inspired by the work M.C. Escher currently seeking funds on Kickstarter. Two years in the making, the deck designer wanted to create a deck of cards that changes with every vision. According to the designer on the campaign page,
I was deeply attracted by his philosophy on the combinations between art and mathematics. With my team, we have been working on tackling the question of “how to present impossible shapes vividly while playing cards?
The deck features fully custom artwork with impossible triangles, multi-cubes and their variations found on the card back, tuck case, and card faces.
The court cards are the delightful sugar in the Altered World deck. Traditionally, the 12 court cards in a deck represent 4 Kings, 4 Queens, and 4 Knights from history. However, they have been redesigned as cubic characters, re-created their clothes, colors and expressions while keeping their historical profiles.
The Aces have also been completely redesigned. We decomposed spades, hearts, diamond and clubs, re-constructed them with optical illusion features. It is the soul of this deck and the most eye-catching part. The Ace of Spade represents RESONANCE, Heart represents VARIATION, Club represents PLIGHT and Diamond represents RESTORATION. All 4 of them are designed in a revolutionary way, combining features of playing card and geometric art.
The design of the Jokers with a famous impossible shape, the Penrose Triangle. The Little Joker shows the graphic manuscript for the Big Joker. Up close, you ca visibly see the graph works showing how the geometries are applied to draw out the whole joker.
The deck is packaged in a Tuck Case with impossible shapes feature, constructs “AW” on the front and the back. All blue, pink, and purples editions’ tuck case have numbered seals, and 3 tuck cases them makes a whole map of the Altered World.
Pledge starts at $20 on Kickstarter.
