Foto Grafis deck. Playing cards with light and control

 

Award winning photographer and graphic designer, Paul Michael Kane is proud to team with Bicycle and the United States Playing Card Company on Foto Grafis, a deck of playing cards with a photographic twist.

The term, Foto Grafis, comes from Latin and means Light and Control, two key elements in making a successful image.  Each of the deck’s 52 cards will feature a carefully considered image and a new system of card recognition that optimizes image space, yet makes reading the cards clear and effortless.

Kane won Club 808’s Design-A-Deck competition back in May of 2013. With some minor tweaks, that same design will be featured on the back of the Foto Grafis cards.

“That win,” Kane says “gave me the confidence to dive into the creation of an entire deck of cards.”

On track to launch his deck on Kickstarter at the beginning of October, the deck will feature new and existing images from Kane’s archive. The court cards will be all new images with models standing in for the court. Not wishing to break tradition, the court cards will contain two One-Eyed Jacks and a Suicide King.

All the images will be in black and white to give the deck a visual continuity”, notes Kane.

 

 

As of this writing, the funding goal for his Kickstarter campaign will be $8,500. Nothing that this is on the low side for a deck of cards printed with the United States Playing Card Company, Kane is not relying solely on Kickstarter Funds to make this deck a reality.

The first stretch goal will be a ‘thank you’ poker chip” Kane says. The chip, opened up at $10,000 – just $1,500 over the initial funding goal – will ship to anyone who pledges for one or more decks at no extra cost.

 

 

The more Kane gets word out about Foto Grafis, the more interesting the campaign gets. Kane promises a lot of fun surprises and collaborations. There will also be a companion Foto Grafis web site, with an index of each image on the card faces.

No stranger to the playing card industry, Kane’s work has been featured in the 2009 release of The Konxari Cards, the wildly successful, paranormal card supplement. Kane served as the photographer on all 88 cards. Published by The IRM Foundation, the cards are a world-wide phenomenon and continue to sell in great numbers.

To help raise hype about the Foto Grafis cards, Kane has created a Facebook page where potential backers can keep track of updates.

For the moment, the cards and indexes are a secret, but I will inform when there are more cards available or when the campaign is on.