March 29, 2017

A Look At Column Five’s Fresh And Delicious Deck Of Playing Cards

This article originally appeared on Column Five.

Each year, we gift our partners with a token of appreciation to honor the work we’ve done together. The gift is a reflection of a theme, value, or passion of ours. One year it was our coffee-based data visualization poster. Another year we turned an inspiring story about Ben Franklin into a fine-art print. This year, we wanted to give our partners something to chew on—figuratively.

As data visualization geeks, we consider ourselves bakers of delicious donut and pie charts. We knead our ideas, smooth out the kinks, sift through data, whip up copy, sprinkle in context, and serve up handcrafted charts that are nourishing for the mind and a treat for the eyes.

To pay homage to that work, we custom designed a fresh batch of playing cards, baked to perfection.

The deck was aesthetically inspired by our craft and symbolically inspired by a single word: flourish.

Flourish (verb): to be healthy and achieve success.

Flourish (noun): a decorative or finishing detail.

In the last year, we have flourished as an agency and as individuals. We grew our families. We honed our talents. We worked with more great partners on many creative projects. While 2016 was also a challenging year in many ways, we’re proud of what we achieved through persistence. We also hope to carry our successes on into this new year, so “flourish” felt like the appropriate theme.

FYI, the word “flourish” is also a nod to cardistry, which is the mesmerizing performance art of card flourishing (an impressive feat that is also the result of persistence). If you’ve never seen it in action before, check it out:

We’ve been itching to design a deck of cards for a while now, so our design team was happy to take the theme and run. (Shout-out to our friends at the Art of Play who helped us bring this dream to life.)

The pack features plenty of delicious details, from the packaging to the individual card design.

For us, this deck is a beautiful reminder of all we’ve accomplished and all we strive to do. We hope it inspires the same in you.

If you’d like your own pack, get ’em while they’re hot.

Want to see more of our passion projects? Take a look at the People For Periods interactive, which helps destigmatize menstruation, and the Popcorn Project, a brainstorming exercise we created with Girls Inc. of Orange County to empower anyone to achieve their goals.

Source: Visual News