The Historical War Playing Cards

Designer: Todd Huynh
Photographer: Chiron Duong
Location: Vietnam
Project Type: Produced
Client: Maztermind
Product Launch Location: Vietnam
Packaging Contents: Playing Cards
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Paper
Printing Process: Foil stamping

Maztermind was founded in Saigon, Vietnam by a team of people with a passion for the traditional board game, who love creative design and craftsmanship. With enthusiasm, expertise, and dedication, Maztermind has created handcrafted products with high quality, special materials, and inspirational designs to give users a new experience, the values ​​of the traditional board game.

With high aesthetic values, we aim at those who love modernly designed items. Besides, Maztermind wants to create a community of board game lovers, they can start with simple games like playing cards.

The Historical War was our first playing cards design including 54 cards. By using strong outlines, we want to highlight the historical characters of the playing cards. Every character in the deck has a story. They who are generals, princes, kings, queens have stories passed by word of mouth or written down and we have shown it in the illustration image. All cards are laminated with gold foil on a dark peacock blue background to create a sense of elegance for the whole.

One of the stories that impressed me was that the image appearing on the Q-heart card is the image of Queen Judith – the character in the Old Testament. With beauty and cunning, she slaughtered Holoferne – the mighty hero of Philemon, to save the people of Bethulia. Besides, the story about Hector – Son of King Priamus. After his brother Paris caused the great disaster, Hector had to lead the Trojan army against the Greeks. Although he foresaw a dark future, he still leads the people of Troy steadfastly fighting the Greeks to protect what they love most.

What’s Unique?
In Vietnam, when it comes to playing cards, people often think of negative things like gambling. So mass production of playing cards is a very difficult thing. Therefore, we treat them as artworks and produce them in limited quantities. But for us, playing cards have a very positive meaning in terms of entertainment and intelligence. With the design of The Historical War, we want to bring the historical story of the cards into the design to change the perception of Vietnamese people about the prejudices of playing cards.