Feminist Playing Cards

The Story

I’m not very good at card games, but I do appreciate them and love coming across unique decks. When I was a kid, I used to collect baseball cards even though I didn’t really like baseball. I just liked collecting things I guess. When thinking of a physical thing to create for Homoground, I first thought about trading cards of different musicians. It sounded like a good idea until I realized, why not poker cards instead? They can be used multiple ways; playing poker with friends, solitude solitaire, drinking games at a party, pieces of art, collectibles, spoke cards, the list goes on and on.

I ran the idea by a few designer friends and they loved it and started recommending other artists to me. I got together 14 artists (many of whose work I really admire) to illustrate the deck with musicians that they related to, admired, respected. The artists involved are: Andrea Rae Georgas, Brandi Lee, Clare Brown, Citizen A, Cristy C Road, Emily Henderson, Ginny Maki, Kay Kelley, Lauren Denitzio, Liz Prince, Maggie Owsley, Marissa Paternoster and Ramsey Beyer.

In January 2012, I launched a Kickstarter campaign on the night of Homoground’s 1 year anniversary party to raise $12,000 (the cost to produce & manufacture the cards) in 60 days.

Above is the Kickstarter video I created for the campaign (after the video was made, there were 2 changes to the final artists). My friend Robin Deary took the photos of the cards that you see in the beginning. Artist Brandi Lee illustrated the “Feminist Playing Card” banner at the end.

On March 21, 2012 the Kickstarter campaign ended successfully and 2,500 decks were manufactured and ready for distribution on September 18th 2012.

I created the website www.feministcards.com to display all information relevant to the project. Please visit the website to find up to date information about the project (including images, updates, links to press, artist and musician bios, and social networking sites).

The Press

 

photo by @jenstevens7

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